From time to time, I update the readers of this blog on the goings on of the blog and our other business interests. It’s been quite some time since I’ve made such a post, so here goes…

This morning I was considering that next year (2012) will be the 10-year anniversary of my blogging on this URL (some of the original content has long-ago been eaten by the interwebs as a result of my learning curve back near the beginning in doing things such as this…). That seems noteworthy to me in a world of often changing technologies, the blog has held its own and continues to drive an immense amount of business our way – and also to our clients who blog on their own domains. It’s a powerful tool, and one worthy of more attention in the coming months.

One-Year Ago

In March of 2010, we introduced the new logo on this blog, and what ensued was the most successful year of this blog’s history in terms of traffic, reader engagement, and social sharing. At the same time, we launched an effort to get small business owners to connect with one another in more of a community format, free of charge. We provided a free business directory listing exclusively for locally owned and operated small businesses (the sorts that don’t get marketing assistance from an outside power and really make 100% of their decisions at the local level). That part of the experiment didn’t go as well. We learned, as I think some other major bloggers and business people are learning as we speak… small business owners don’t have time for extracurricular networking online. I was reminded that this happens on a local level – where they are pressured more to participate in Chambers and business development groups – and so they do. Over the year, we’ve backed off of wishing business owners would spend more time using us as a networking center and have been happy that they’ve increasingly relied on us for information and ideas.

Promotional Ideas via Email

As such, we’re pursuing more ways to get more information and ideas out to small business owners in a way that they can digest it. Saving you steps saves you time, so just two months ago, we launched Promo Ideas that Work in This Economy – a weekly e-letter delivered directly to your Inbox. For only $27 a month, you don’t have to think about what sales or promotions you’re going to have, we cover it for you and make the ideas easy to implement. And we do NOT focus on discounting: four out of every five-promo ideas is for selling in a way other than discounting. If you haven’t yet signed up for this, may I recommend that you do – it’s a long, beefy letter every single week, delivered to your Inbox.

Some Things Always Stay the Same

I have been reminded that in more than a decade of being self-employed, technology and marketing tools have changed a LOT, but the lifestyle of a local small business owner has NOT changed much at all. The obstacles of limited time, limited know-how when it comes to technology, and limited ability to maintain consistent, effective marketing are all still in place. And these are the challenges that we must help you overcome.

What the Future Holds

As such, the future holds more “on the ground” services that will be bundled and made ridiculously affordable for small business owners AND save you time, save you having to know about technology at all, and save you from the emotional and financial roller coaster that results from inconsistent marketing. The blog will carry on, and it will be a supplement to new business models that will bring services to your door (yes, with a real live person). It will bring expertise to your community. And it will bring even more ideas and information to your Inbox and to this blog. I’m not ready to make any formal announcements yet, but suffice it to say, we’re very excited about the iteration of our relationship with you. I hope you’ll stay in touch and continue to help us learn how to help you better as we go along this path together.

If you don’t get our blog posts delivered to your Inbox, now might be a great time to subscribe, so you don’t miss any opportunities for you or your community as we announce them in the coming months. I welcome your feedback. Our passion is to help you succeed.

Image by: By ▌ÇP▐

In his book “Free,” Chris Anderson (Twitter link) talks about the power of the digital economy to minimize the cost of producing and distributing a product to the public. We’ve all seen and participated in examples of this, whether it’s from using a free e-mail service like Google to downloading free e-books or getting free apps for our phones. Free is nice.

For retailers dealing in tangible items, though, how does the low cost, and ensuing “freeness” of many digital products matter? You’ve still working in terms of concrete stuff: food, clothes, gift items, raw materials to be transformed or tangible lines to be distributed. The good news is that you can still take advantage of free, using it in terms of your own business to attract new customers, retain loyal customers, build sales, and build your business – all with digital content that costs you next to nothing to create and distribute.

A blog is one of the easiest ways to create and give free digital content. It doesn’t have to cost you anything to set up a blog; you can invest in a professional design and hosting service, and at some point you might need to, but getting started can be as simple as setting up a free blog on one of the many web services. After the initial set-up, the cost for you is in terms of time. You need to put the time in to create 1 – 3 posts every week, on a regular basis. These posts are your freebie; they’re informative, valuable, helpful, and, of course, somehow related to your business.

One step up from blog posts are digital products such as e-books and e-newsletters. Both, again, can be produced for only the cost of your time. You can easily create an e-newsletter weekly or monthly and mail it out to your email list of customers who want to hear from you. Make sure the articles you include in your e-newsletter are informative, valuable, helpful, and somehow related to your business. Even though you’re giving this content away free, if it becomes irrelevant, then it moves into the “spam” category.

An e-book can be a collection of the blog posts and e-newsletters you’ve produced, or it can be new content entirely. You can format an e-book in an office program, convert it to a .pdf file, and offer it as a free download on your website, blog, and Facebook page. Here are a few examples:

A restaurant owner could offer an e-book that contained any or all of the following:

• A recipe collection
• Ideas for entertaining
• Cooking tips
• A “day in the life of a restaurant” story
• Ideas for creating restaurant-worthy menus
• Ideas for cooking at home
• Tips on using fresh, seasonal food
• Essays about cooking/eating green
• Essays about food/eating in general
• Tips on any food-related specialty topic (spices, herbs, growing your own veggies, ethnic cooking, desserts, etc.)

A retail storeowner could offer an e-book that related to its products in some way, as the following:

• A style manual for spring/summer/fall/winter
• An up-to-the-minute clothing & fashion trend tip list
• Advice on putting a great wardrobe together
• Help on dressing for your body/personal style
• Tips for wearing accessories
• Profiles of fashionable people
• Great gift ideas for men
• Great gift ideas for women
• Tips on hosting a great party
• Ideas for fun dinner parties
• Ideas for family activities

The list is endless, and limited only in how much time you can give to producing the content. Of course, if you’re thinking “I am not a writer,” then look to your staff for someone who is. You can often find a willing volunteer, someone who can dedicate some portion of their working hours to helping create and promote these digital products.

As you create the digital freebies, of course, you want to let your customers know about them. Facebook and Twitter, flyers in your store, e-mail sign-up sheets at the counter, and some simple training so that all of your employees promote your digital freebies by word-of-mouth. Every customer who walks into your store should know about the great e-book they can get (free!) or e-newsletter they can sign up to receive (free!) or regularly updated blog they can follow (free!).

Every digital freebie you distribute builds your reputation and strengthens your connection with your customers; and, since digital is so easy to share, it gets passed along from one network to another, extending your reach well past where you can go with a print mailing or newspaper ad. It’s cheap for you and free for them, so everybody wins.
Image by Ken Hawkins

I subscribe to lots of online, big box and chain restaurant e-mail newsletters. Why? Because it helps me keep a pulse on the offers and strategies that you local folks are competing with, so I can help you stay on the cutting edge and out maneuver those slow turning big box battleships.

Today I want to use an example from a Boden e-mail newsletter – a company that I think does a very nice job with strategy, offer composition and color psychology in their e-mail marketing efforts.

Win from the Start

All those complicated matters aside, note this one liner found at the top of their e-mails:

Apply this Idea Today

You can do this, too. No matter what e-mail marketing software you use, there is a “click here to read this online” or some one liner similar to that as a default setting on your e-mail marketing software – and included in every e-mail you send – whether from Constant Contact, aWeber, MyEmma, Blue Sky Factory or the like…

Instead of the default message, try updating the message every time you send an e-mail to match the content of your message. Many smartphones don’t automatically load images on such e-mails, and many e-mails go to the smartphone first. Try structuring your next e-mail to include a beefier “can’t see this message?” one liner that includes the offer. I also like that the “click here to view online” element of this sentence is earlier in the sentence rather than later. And I also like that the one liner is short enough to just be literally ONE LINE in the visual display of the e-mail on my computer screen.

Keep it simple but make the offer and ask for the sale right away, and watch your click-thru rates and conversions climb.

Happy e-mailing!

Photo credits: Boden USA (http://www.bodenusa.com)

Collecting customer information is one of the best forms of marketing you have. It gives you the ability to get in touch with people who have already been to your brick-and-mortar store, who have experienced your services or products, who have, essentially, already begun building a relationship with you. And best of all? It’s free. You may pay out a little bit if you send postcards or a paper newsletter or flyer, but the cost is minimal compared to paying for a radio or newspaper ad. And if you start moving your customer interactions online, you can use this customer information to stay in contact with your customers and prospect list via email without any postage or printing cost. (More on e-mail marketing ideas.)

So what stops local business owners from regularly collecting customer information?

• They don’t think about it.
• They don’t want to be pushy.
• They don’t know how.

Start Thinking About It
If I offered you a way to get targeted marketing messages to your best customers for free, wouldn’t you be interested? That’s what collecting customer information is all about it. “Not thinking about it” is just a poor excuse, so here’s your free reminder to start thinking about and take advantage of a great marketing strategy. You don’t have to be pushy to ask if people want to be on your Preferred Customer List. You just ask, politely, and give them a quick and easy way to sign up. If you get a “No” in response, you don’t have to push it.

How to Collect the Information

• Step 1: Make it quick and easy.

Have a simple form handy, make lots and lots of copies, and leave it out in your retail space. Don’t make the form long; in fact, the shorter the better. Ask for the customer’s name, email address, and (perhaps) phone number or mailing address. The name and email address are the essentials, and you can just stick with those and get great results.

• Step 2: Make it beneficial for the customer.

Give your list a name – the Preferred Customer List or something along those lines – and give customers a clear, concise reason why they should join it. “For exclusive offers.” “For special discounts.” “For members-only events.”

• Step 3: Train your employees.

Create a short script and train every single employee to go through that script. It can be very short, and very simple: “Sir or Ma’am, would you like to sign up for our Preferred Customer List? We just need your email address, and you’ll get access to exclusive offers just for our Preferred Customers.” Teach your employees to have the form and a pen ready, and hold it out to the customer while they are asking the question. This small physical gesture makes it almost instinctive for the customer to reach forward. And no, employees shouldn’t be pushy either. If a customer declines, all that is needed is a polite response: “Well, maybe next time! Thanks for shopping with us!”

• Step 4: Be an Example.

Let your employees see you going through that script whenever you ring out a customer, answer a question, or call a customer about a special order. The script can easily be followed over the phone; you or your employee will just need to take the information verbally and write it down.

• Step 5: Be True to Your Word

If you’ve offered exclusive deals or special events, follow through. A weekly email is best, but at the least follow up with a monthly email offering a special deal, coupon, or event. Make sure the folks on your mailing list understand that it’s exclusive; that’s the value for them.

• Step 6: Get Feedback

Over time, your list will grow and you’ll have customers you get to know well. Use your list to get feedback on everything from your products to your store appearance to the kind of deals or events they would really like to see. Your customer list can quickly become a very valuable, informal method of market research; and the market is your ideal customer, so you know the information is good. (Here is a cool idea on WHAT to send to your e-mail list once you create it.)

The holidays are the perfect time to start collecting customer information, so get to it. Create that form and start asking. You’ll have a great way to follow up with all those new customers you get shopping for holiday specials.

Image by bulliver.

Introducing my very old fashioned (using e-mail technology) “thank & recommend” strategy for building customer loyalty, customer visit frequency and improving retail or restaurant sales.

This system will help you lock in customers for life and earn business in the short term.

Before we get much further, please know that I get that life is busy and that there are lots of technical system (called trigger e-mail marketing) that do this in a more systematic way. But I want to encourage you that if things are at all sluggish in your business that you dedicate to working this system until things get better. Then, once they are better, set the calendar on autopilot naming days or weeks on a regular basis when you do it again for a short period to keep things flowing and extend your attitude of gratitude back to your customers (for example, once things are great again, pick the slowest night of the week for your restaurant or retail store – or choose to do this on the 2nd week of every month for five days, etc.). Customer loyalty, visit frequency and sales volume will improve.

Here’s the three step “thank and recommend” customer loyalty builder system:

1. Post lots of current products or menu items in an online photo album that is public. Post them on blog posts on your blog, Facebook photo albums, Flickr, or even Picasa.

2. Dedicate that every day for one week employees are required to take note (either using the technology tools of the point of sale system or old fashioned note-taking) of each customers e-mail address and what they bought.

3. At the end of each day, you, your employee or wait staff, should pen a short customized e-mail based on a standard system that will make it quick and easy… Here’s a template that you can follow to make the e-mails quick and easy to write.

Dear (insert first name of customer or Mr/Mrs/Ms Last name) -

I wanted to personally thank you for visiting us today at (insert name of business). Your support of our locally owned business really means a lot to us.

As I recall, you (choose purchased/enjoyed/ordered/took home) the (insert name of what they purchased).

Since you left, I’ve been thinking that you might also really like (insert name of three other potential products that are linked to their photo online). I included links to them here, but you can also check them out the next time you come in – which I hope is soon!

If you see something you’d like immediately, just hit reply, and I can answer any questions you might have or take care of your order over the phone tomorrow.

But don’t be a stranger – we always enjoy seeing you!

Thanks again for your business,

(insert your name)

P.S. In case you haven’t already, you can connect with us on Facebook at (insert direct link) and follow us on Twitter (insert direct link) for more ideas just like these. Thanks again!

Now – go get some sales and share your feedback in our comments below!

Photo Credit: a.drian

Use the “fishbowl” method to collect an e-mail address from every single customer or prospect that you encounter in your local business this week. This simple method is something you can implement in your brick-and-mortar business by the end of the day today, and it will lead to the collection of pure gold (aka e-mail addresses) for your business – gold that can be leveraged to move the needle again and again for your small business! Here’s how it works:

1. Procure a large bowl that will fit in a prominent location either to the right (as one exits) of the front door of your store at eye level and/or at each your point of sale/cash-wrap stations.

2. Create a sign to affix to the bowl that has a big, bold headline that says something like “Join Our E-Mail List for a Chance to Win!”

3. Add subtext under the sign’s headline, create an irresistible offer that fits your business that follows this basic idea: “Once a month, one entry from that month will be awarded a $250 gift certificate to our store!”

4. Watch the e-mail addresses pile up.

5. Enter the e-mail addresses into your e-mail system at least monthly BEFORE the award notification is made.

6. On a monthly basis, choose an e-mail address and make the award. E-mail them the award notification with an inquiry for their mailing address, so that they’ll come into the store. Also include in that e-mail a suggestion such as the following: “We value you as a customer, and we’re thrilled that you’ve won this prize. You are definitely deserving! We’d love it if you’d share some ideas of what you’ll be buying with your gift certificate with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. You can connect with us there at facebook.com/business name and on Twitter @businessname. I hope you won’t mind that we’ll be letting everyone know who won this month in our e-mail newsletter and through our social media channels as a way to encourage folks to enter this month’s new contest! Thanks again for being such a fantastic customer! We really appreciate your business!”

7. Post who won and what they won and how folks can enter the next contest on Facebook. Tag the person who won if possible.

8. Post who won and what they won on Twitter and @ reply the winner, if possible.

9. Include the winner’s name and a call for new entries in your next e-mail newsletter.

Happy fishbowling! You’re going to love the results you get from this great marketing tip!

Maybe you just made the newspaper or a local magazine – or better – you just got interviewed for a major trade publication, the Wall Street Journal or a mainstream lifestyle slick. Maybe a prominent blogger is going to blog about you – or feature you in an upcoming e-newsletter. Maybe you think you’ve thought of something so smart that an influential person tweets about your article, stuff or activities…

These days, publicity comes in all shapes and sizes – but one thing is the same. It will give you a boom. The boom will be short-lived if you’re not prepared to leverage it into long-term sales for your small business. Here are a couple of tips that will help you leverage publicity into long-term growth for your local business.

Get ready for the traffic on your web site.

This seems obvious, but you really should actively prepare to capture customers as a result of the publicity, especially on your small business web site.

1. Make sure an e-mail list signup form (that is short and simple) is strategically located at the top right hand side of all of your web site pages or posts. This will help you grow your e-mail list.

2. Make sure your social media profiles are apparent at the top and bottom of each page or post on your web site, so that folks can connect with you there.

3. Make sure there is fresh and relevant content and that all contact information, forms, store hours, and directions are up to date.

4. Make sure that your web site has the ability to be SHARED so that when people get to your site, they can – with a single click – share your business with 1300 of their closest *cough* *ahem* Facebook friends…. or Twitter followers or other social media connections. We recommend the ShareThis button at the top and bottom of each page or post on your web site.

5. Similarly, install the Facebook LIKE button at the top of each page or post on your web site, so that with a single click and half a thought, your web content or article can be posted to their Facebook Wall and their friends’ newsfeeds. This exposes you to their friends.

6. Finally, install the TweetMeme’s Retweet button at the top of each page or post on your web site. This button not only allows the sharing feature on Twitter, but it allows YOU the measurement to see who shared your content – so you can thank them and otherwise engage them via Twitter.

Prepare to leverage the publicity on social media.

Social media is where you will turn the publicity into a boom for yourself. Often media in and of themselves are not a direct connector. But the power of your network mixing with theirs can really work magic. Here are a few things you can do to stir that pot:

1. Tweet with the news writers and folks in the media on a regular basis (that means, ideally, BEFORE the story hits). When they post a story about your business or referencing you or your business in any way, use all available methods to THANK them for their kind words. Tag them on Facebook, and tweet out a thanks to them.

2. Do the equivalent of the “reprint.” Re-publish the news at least twice – maybe three times after it happens. Facebook and Twitter news cycles are short these days, so posting an article Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon are likely to expose your story to a different group of folks. If you have over 1500 fans or followers, you should also post the story again later at night (between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.) as well.

3. When you post, drive the traffic to the story via your web site.

How does this all turn readers or viewers or listeners into sales? Again, as in the first edition of Leveraging the Boom: Turn Events into Sales the goal is to make new connections – to capture contacts that you can turn into relationships and then keep as customers for a long and profitable lifetime value of the customer. It’s about short-term tactics that lead to marathon relationships and long-term growth and profitability.

What say you? How have you turned publicity into sales?

Photo Credit: Eivind Z. Molvær