January.

For retailers, it’s cold not just outside, but indoors when it comes to moving the stock off the shelves. After the Christmas-buying sprees, most shoppers are back at home cooling their heels while retailers try to entice them back out to buy. The one stand-by many local store owners turn to is holding big sales, and they’re finding that in a tough economy it’s necessary to offer deeper and deeper discounts to get folks back and willing to buy. It’s great to have warm bodies in your store again, but it’s not great if your sale ends up making you no profit due to all that deep discounting.

So what’s the method of success that allows you to get the customers back and still make a profit? Is there a way to get both?

There are several methods you can employ to attract business and still maintain a profit margin. See which one of these (or more than one) will work best in your restaurant, retail store, or service-based business and give it a go.

Know Your Bottom Line, and Sell Just Above

This is the method to use with that inventory that needs to move out the door, not with that great new batch of products that just came in for Spring. Calculate your bottom dollar on these items: how low can you go and still make something, even if it’s a small something? Then make your strategy to sell many of these items, each bringing in that small amount of profit, and you’ll end up with a good amount of profit when all is said and done. Plus you’ll have cleared your store of excess, aging inventory.

Create a Loss-Leader

Grocery stores use the loss-leader method just about every week; their circulars advertise a deal that’s “too good to pass up” for their shoppers. In many cases, the grocery stores are taking a loss on this item, but they know that just getting the customers in the store is worth that small loss. How many times have you gone to the grocery store and bought just one item? Most of us don’t shop for groceries that way, and why not? Because in the process of locating and purchasing the loss-leader item, we’re unable to ignore the displays of other great merchandise – some also discounted, some not – that we have to walk past and around to find our goal. Use the same strategy in your store; advertise a huge discount on a popular item, set up a great display for it, and put it smack in the middle of many other great displays with enticing offers of their own.

Offer Package Deals

Another angle on the loss-leader strategy is to offer package deals and discounts; this method allows you to package your items of choice together, being sure that one of them is a cheaper item for you to purchase, which gives you greater wiggle room for a discount. You can offer a greater discount on a combined package, knowing that your combined investment in all the package items is still well below the discounted package price. You might even use a “buy one of these, get one of these other things” free method to sell a costlier item without a discount while taking the “loss” on your cheaper, freebie item. It’s the same method beauty product companies’ use when they offer a “special gift” with a purchase.

Add Value that Doesn’t Cost You Cash

What can you offer your customers that doesn’t come with any cash cost to you? Look beyond the basic inventory, and think about subscriptions, memberships, special discount or dining clubs, consultations, or other perks that offer a huge incentive for customers thinking about a purchase. The value is still there for the customer, who would otherwise have to pay to get the subscription or membership or consultation; but the value-added item isn’t costing you cash that you can’t afford to lose. Use these value-added items to upsell; offer them as freebies or part of a package, which allows you to give your customers an increased value for the same cost without decreasing your profit margin.

What method sounds best for your business?

Image by Alan Cleaver2000.

In last week’s Promo Ideas e-letter, I made a garden analogy when talking about bad habits that sneak into our business… I correlated those bad habits with weeds in our garden. Spring is wonderful in a lot of ways, but one of it’s shortcomings is the emergence of a fresh crop of weeds in the garden and flowerbeds. In order for our gardens to produce at peak, those weeds must go. And the same holds true in business.

I challenged my readers to identify those weeds in their own business, and here I’d like to walk through some of the ways that I’ve found work for me when I need to banish bad habits from my business life. You’ll have others I imagine, and I hope you’ll share them in the comments section.

1. Focus on cultivating healthy habits.

I’m a farmer’s daughter, so I’ve learned a few life lessons that way growing up. One is that bad weeds have a hard time flourishing in the midst of a lot of other healthy plants. Now, some will, and they will need to purposefully be eliminated. However, at the same time that you are removing weeds, you must replace them with healthy plants. Or the weeds just grow back.

The same is true in business. At the same time that you purpose to quit doing things wrong; you have to start doing things right. You need to determine what the correct and healthy habit is—then start doing that—and stop doing the bad one. Focus on how consistent you are with doing the right thing—and celebrate your wins—rather than focusing on not doing a bad thing and beating yourself up over missteps.

2. Write down your plan, goals or resolve.

Decide what needs to change – then write it down. Maybe you write it on a napkin or a post-it note. Maybe you e-mail it to yourself or set an alarm on your phone to remind you every day. It doesn’t matter how low-tech or high-tech… stats show that when you write something down, it has an exponentially greater chance of actually happening. That chance gets better and better as you refer to your plan daily and challenge yourself daily as you develop those new habits.

3. Attack the process in bite-sized pieces.

You didn’t develop those bad habits overnight, and they won’t quit happening overnight. When I gain a little weight, it takes time and a lot of bad eating habits to put on the pounds. And as such, I can’t lose that weight overnight, no matter how much I wish I could. Instead, divide up your goals into smaller, even daily, incremental steps. Then attack those bite-sized pieces one bite at a time.

4. Each day is a new day.

Without a doubt, none of us are perfect. As such, our path to better habits and achieving our goals will be riddled with backsliding or missteps or just not getting things done. Free yourself from the slavery of perfection and clean the slate everyday when you end your day. Wake up refreshed and re-energized to pick up on the right track wherever you left off. Every day is a new day, and there is no sense in beating yourself up over what you did or did not accomplish the day before. If you’re always looking backwards, you’ll never go forward. Purpose each day to start fresh no matter what successes or failures happened yesterday. The success of yesterday doesn’t guarantee success today, and just as much, the failures of yesterday don’t mean you’ll fail today. Chin up. Feel free to succeed. Review your written goals. Go do something good. Even revolutionary!

Photo Credit: kusine

One easy way locally owned business can get themselves on the map (literally) is by soliciting customer reviews for your business on geographically based review sites. Review sites are usually very large conglomerates with individual mini-sites for each geographic location. Often they’re divided by state or region, and then subdivided by city or township within that region. The bottom line in this uber-web-based world in which we live is simply this: If your business can’t be found through a quick web search – you’re business is going to die.

Use Geo-Based Review Sites to Grow Your Business

What’s great about these websites is that they allow brand-new customers to find you – and want to try your business out – when they may have known nothing about you before. These new customers are online searching for your type of business in your area; if you’ve set up your profile and garnered some reviews on any of these sites, they’re likely to run across your business. Suddenly they not only know you exist, what you do, and where you’re located, they also get to find out what your customers think about you by reading the reviews.

So how do you get into this action? It’s pretty simple.

Step 1: Focus on the major review sites.

The most important local review site is the home of the “red pin” – Google Places, formerly known as Google Local. Other review sites include the following:

• Yelp.com
• Local.Yahoo.com
• CitySearch.com
• InsiderPages.com
• CitysBest.com

There are more, but if you get set up on at least a few of these major websites, your information will get picked up by the other sites as well.

Step 2: “Claim” your business and/or set up your profile.

Once you’re at the website, search for your business. You may find it already listed; if so, you’ll see an option to claim the business or add updated information. Fill in all the information you can: physical address, phone number, email address, Internet information (email, website, blog, Facebook, Twitter), store hours, specialties, owner’s name, history. Some sites will give you more room than others. Some will also allow you to post pictures; I highly recommend that you post a few photos of the outside of the store, inside of the store and a sampling of available products.

If you don’t find your business, you’ll simply have to start the profile or information from scratch. Follow the same principle as above by including as much information as possible on each site. Remember, the more information you have, the more you will show up in search results and the easier it will be for people to find you.

Step 3: Ask for reviews.

The most important part of a business profile on one of these review sites is, of course, the customer reviews. So start asking for reviews. When your best customers come in to your business, make it a point to personally ask them to go online and submit a brief review to ONE of the review sites. Don’t ask them to submit reviews to more than one; that’s simply too much and too complicated, and most customers (even the ones who love you) won’t respond. All you have to do is say something like, “We’ve just set up our profile at CitySearch.com, and we’re trying to get some reviews up. If you have a moment when you get home, would you mind sharing about your experiences here? You’re one of our best customers, and we’d really appreciate new customers getting a chance to hear from you.”

Then hand each customer a card with the information printed on it, so they won’t forget when they get back home.

That’s it! The whole process is simple and can really make a huge difference in helping new customers find you, so get it started now and see what results you’re getting in a few months.

Image: dbking.

One complaint many small business owners have, once they launch into building up an online presence, is how long it can take to build up a good fan/customer base online. Fortunately, there are several good answers for that complaint, and one of them is to get more exposure online from other sources. Credible sources, such as news sites and popular blogs, can publish one story and link to your business’s website and cause a huge increase in the online interaction you’re getting. So, the next question is, how do you get to these credible sources?

Here’s a little secret you might not know about writers: they’re always looking for something good to write about. Many major news sites, especially the hyper-local ones such as Examiner.com, are written almost exclusively by freelance writers who are out there finding the stories and doing the research themselves. If you have a story ready to go, and it’s related to their subject area, pitch them. The same goes for bloggers who write reviews or write about topics related to your business.

Step 1: Find the contacts.
Go to any local news website and find the writers who specialize in a topic that relates to your business. Read several of their articles to get a feel for the kind of story or information they prefer to write about. Then think about how your business can fit into their writing.

Search for related blogs. Find review blogs, if you’re looking for product reviews. Or find topical blogs, if you’re looking for a news piece or a story to be written about your business. Most likely you can go to the blogs you’d be interested in reading from a professional standpoint. Read them and get a feel for the kind of posts they produce.

Step 2: Write a pitch.
Get the individual contact information for each writer you want to contact; this information is usually readily available on the site. All you really need is the writer’s name and email address.

Put together a brief pitch for each individual writer. Make it short, snappy, friendly, and related to what that writer writes about.

For example, a pitch for a local news writer who specializes in fashion and style:

Dear Sally Mae Writer,
I’m Ruth Johnson, the owner of the local business The Hattery. I noticed you recently wrote a series about new trends in local fashion, and I wanted to tell you about our spring event that highlights local fashions in a unique way. Each spring, we put together a fashion show with local models; other boutiques contribute the outfits, and The Hattery provides custom-designed hats and/or head wear for each outfit.

It’s a fun event that local women look forward too, and it really sets the trends in our local fashion arena for the season. I’d love to write a piece about this for you myself, or talk with you if you’re interested in an interview. Again, my name is Ruth Johnson; my contact info is…

Thanks so much for your time.
Sincerely,
Ruth Johnson

Step 3: Keep at it.
If you send out one pitch a week, you’ll soon have more online news and stories than you know what to do with (I bet that’s how the bloggers over at Young House Love got all the press shown at the bottom of this page??). Freelance writers and bloggers need relevant stories, interesting topics, and real people to interview. If you can offer any one of those elements, you’ve got a good chance of getting online exposure that can really increase your customer base in a hurry.

Image: Charlie Brewer.

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)

In this week’s marketing strategy, we’re going to explore how to give customer rewards (customer loyalty rewards) in return for customers sharing your business on popular social media sites.

iMingle is a fairly new player in the social networking scene, and it brings in an element most people don’t associate with social networking: insurance. It works by rewarding people for networking and purchasing insurance; when individuals network, and get a group together to purchase insurance, they can get a multi-policy deal and garner big discounts that otherwise they’d have no way to access. The insurance companies get more customers, and the purchasers get a better bargain on what they pay.

So far it’s working pretty well, and it’s a new concept that small businesses can grab onto and use in their own way. Here’s how:

Putting the Strategy to Work in Your Locally-Owned Business

To apply this strategy to your own small business, ask yourself two questions: what do customers want most from you (what can you provide) and how can you give your customers what they want with your social networks? Let’s break that down a little bit by looking at a hypothetical case: a small-town restaurant owner with a good business and the desire to expand with online sales.

So our restaurant owner – let’s call him Jerry – thinks about what his customers want most from him. That means both his local customers and his (potential) online customers. Jerry wants to use his online presence to connect with local people and to increase his customer base for Internet sales of his packaged gourmet foods. He knows what his local customers want: they want to get great deals and discounts on meals at the restaurant. He’s asked them in various ways, and that’s always the most popular response.

Jerry’s not so sure about his Internet customers, because he’s still getting into that world of online sales. So he takes a guess that they probably want great deals on the stuff they’re going to buy from him, too. They want high-quality, unique gourmet food items and they want to get deals and discounts on those items.

In both cases, what Jerry needs to provide is a better deal or the opportunity for a discount: a way for his customers to get an insider’s bargain on his meals and gourmet items. The second question he thinks about is this: how can he use his online presence to give his customers what they want, in a way that rewards them for interacting with him (i.e. his restaurant) online?

Jerry comes up with these ideas:

• He can give a coupon every time someone refers a friend who becomes a fan of the restaurant’s Facebook page or a follower of the restaurant on Twitter.
• He can offer group discounts; when a fan or follower gets X number of people to make a purchase (in the restaurant or via the online store) they all get a certain discount. He can use coupon codes for this.
• He can give a coupon for any type of social interaction online which promotes his restaurant; customers can “earn” a discount by sharing a link to his webpage, his Facebook page, or his Twitter account, or by blogging about his restaurant, reviewing his products, or getting a friend to sign up for his e-newsletter.

What ideas do you have for your business to expand your reach to new customers while rewarding the loyalty of existing customers?

Image: One Laptop per Child

Editor’s Note: This is a post in the “How to Create a 2011 Local Business Marketing Plan”* series. Some of it will be shared here on [resultsrevolution.com]. The rest will be shared via my free newsletter. Get the newsletter to get the full planning series.

Do you have your business goals for 2011 etched in stone yet?

If not, it’s time to take all of those notes out of your notebook and do something with them. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, sign-up for our e-mail newsletter and forward me your confirmation – I’ll send you the back issues of our planning series so you can catch up).

How to define your goals for 2011.

1. Of all of the notes in your notebook over the past few weeks, go through and circle the things that stand out as MOST IMPORTANT. It’s time to pick priorities and create focus. It’s time to hone in on some themes that will describe your 2011.

2. Group the CIRCLED ITEMS into categories. Usually the things that we deem priorities usually could be grouped together in themes or categories. Maybe several of your items have to do with financial issues – sales growth, financial responsibility, decreasing debt, cash flow management, payroll issues, your own earnings, etc. If so, put all of those items together under a category called FINANCIAL. And so on for the rest of the circled items.

3. Usually folks end up with only 3-4 categories at the end of this exercise. If you have more, go back and circle the 2-3 categories that if they fall short will cause the failure of your business. Which are make or break – and which are just desires. At this point you should have no more than 3-4 CATEGORIES from which you will now define your 2011 business goals. Just let go of everything else. The fact of the matter is that if you will focus on the few items most critical to your business health that other things will fall into place more easily later. But you have to do things in order – and you can’t do it all. Success takes time – believe it or not – and a year doesn’t last as long as it did when we were five years old.

4. Create a list of THREE – FOUR goals you want to accomplish in 2011. If we stick to the financial analogy, you’ll look at your list of items in the framework of a single category. For example, look at all of the notes you now have lumped into the financial category. What single metric would accomplish them all – or at least most of them? Would a 15% increase in retail sales allow you to in turn accomplish your debt retirement, personal earnings, and cash flow management issues? Maybe – maybe not. But the idea here is to boil those themes into a single S.M.A.R.T. goal. S.M.A.R.T. standing for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-sensitive.

An example in this financial theme would be “Increase retail sales for 2011 10% over 2010.” Only you will know if this is attainable and realistic – but I will help you figure that out by introducing a simple method for accomplishing goals in the next edition of our e-mail newsletter. So sign up now, if you haven’t already.

Supplement Your Goals

Goals are good, and in my mind, necessary. They shouldn’t be like resolutions for a business – because resolutions don’t make it very far. Goals are meant to give you a target to aim at – a way to know you won. You can look back on your year, measure your success and celebrate your wins.

However, goals are usually so specific that without a supporting player they can even be distracting. That’s why I like what Chris Brogan does with his “three words” concept. These are, as I understand, guiding principles for a year that work with goals but provide more than that – a higher level purpose for each year. Read Chris’ excellent post because it explains this concept just fine, so there’s no reason for me to repeat it – and his 2011 post is FULL to the brim of other business people who said their three words out loud and got included in that post. It’ll give you some ideas, hopefully.

Stay tuned for my three words. I’m pretty excited about them.

Photo credit: TheFasterDanish