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This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Rick Segel, a highly respected merchandiser, advertising professional and public speaking expert. I thought I would share some of his advice as well as incorporate my own, because everyday on this forum there are at least 2-3 posts asking the same question:
How can I attract more people to my business?
Let me give a disclaimer first... The information and advice I am about to give is not gospel, but is based on an expert's experience, research, and my own limited experience. Some things may or may not be applicable to your business. Furthermore, this does not apply to those of you who build a website and expect millions of people to come without spending a dollar on advertising. The title is "Small Budget" NOT "no budget". And finally, many points are more applicable to small businesses, B&M businesses, and mostly targeted at the retail industry; they for the most part are not applicable to strictly online businesses (although some parts may be).
So with this, let me begin. I will break this into 2 or 3 parts over the next few days. Feel free to leave comments:
The four myths about advertising and promotions:
#1: All Advertising costs
#2: All promotions are price or sale promotions
#3: Institutional advertising works slowly
#4: Everybody knows you
The goal of your advertising should be to have the customer repeat the following two lines:
"They're the place to go for ________"
"They have the best ________"
You need to decide what you want those blanks to be.
Let me pose a couple questions to you as you are reading:
Do you have horrible customer service?
Do you have high prices and gouge your customers?
Do you have an awful selection?
My guess is that you answered 'no' to all three questions. Let me tell you something, your competitors are answering the same way. You can not compete on customer service, price or selection. Those days are over. Loyalty is dead! Instead, what you need to do is keeps things interesting. Find a hook. Differentiate yourself. What motivates customers to buy? In your industry it might be hot new products or your customers want to be the first to find out about something. Differentiation is the key component of everything that will be discussed in this and the follow-up posts.
Signature Lines (I am not talking about a forum signature):
Signature lines, also known as slogans among other things, should be key to every piece of advertising you do. You must create a signature line that differentiates your business, intrigues potential customers, intices people to want your product and most importantly addresses the two questions above where you filled in the blanks.
Word of Mouth is the best form of advertising... But you need to give people something to talk about! You need to be special, you need to be different. It is estimated that in the retail industry, 83% of business comes from word of mouth. But pleasing a customer is not enough. You need to put out eye-catching ads and have spectacular promotions to get people talking.
Contests, Awards, and Best of... these things are great for promoting your business. Make up an award and honor someone publicly. The award doesn't even have to be related to your business; make it related to your local community. Have a contest for the best police officer, best hairdresser, most friendly gas station attendant, anything! It draws attention to your business. If you give out prizes for contests, make people come to you to get it. If you have a store and someone wins a gift certificate, make them come to the store to collect it. Do not send it in the mail.
Be unique, pay attention to detail. Do something different. Give gifts with orders. Make people remember you.
There was a whirlpool repair center that was doing phenominal and was known as the flower store. Why? Because everytime the repairman came to your house, they would bring a rose with a thankyou card attached. It cost the company about $1 per customer, but it got people talking, it was interesting, and made them standout. I buy clothes from bluefly.com on occasion. When you receive their order, you get a normal shopping bag in your box. This is not only creative and original, it is also free advertising for them if you ever use the bag... and believe it or not, most people save shopping bags to use again.
When possible, send something where they need to come to you for the matching item. Think of something creative, but valuable. For instance, years ago, a store sent 1 glove out to potential customers with the idea that they needed to come to the store to redeem the other glove (for free). Over 90% of the customers who came to the store ended up buying something.
Maybe you have heard that copy is king. That is true, but Headline is Emperor.
Small consistent ads are more powerful than intermittent large ads. Institutional ads work better than price ads.
Newspaper ads
These are three effective newspaper ads:
1) Profile ad - profile your best customer, make it someone who is well known and respected. Put your tagline and information in the ad, but it is not the focus.
2) Q&A ad - become an expert. Take out small ads in the newspaper offering tips on a weekly basis. Have a question and post an answer related to your business. Put your business information on the bottom of the ad. Not only will you get more business and be known as an expert, at the end of the year you will have 52 'tips' about your business, now you can write a book.
3) Specialty ads - "________ is my specialty." It doesn't have to and probably shouldn't be specificly what your business is. But it should say why you are special and who you cater to, what customers you want, and imply that you are the best at serving them. In order to do this, you really need to define who you want to target, who is your specialty. If you are a woman's clothes store, can you target mothers? brides? mother of the bride? teens? Do not say "woman's clothes is my specialty", instead say "Mothers are my specialty".
Radio ads - Not that effective anymore. If you do go for radio ads, don't do short ad blitzes. The most effective advertising is on a week, off a week.
You don't need to pay for radio ads. Donate prizes to your local radio station. Call them up and honestly say "I don't have the money to pay for advertising on your station, but I would like to give you some gift certificates to give to your listeners and hope you can mention my business." Radio stations love this! ... and you get free airtime.
TV ads - If you don't have the money to do a big production, don't try. You don't want your ad looking like a local public service channel commercial, it will not help your business. If your ad appears next to a McDonal's ad that took $6 million to produce, you won't compete. Instead, put together a montage. Change pictures every 6 seconds, have soft music in the background and a voiceover. This is both cheap and effective.
Don't buy spots in advance. Ask the station or cable company to buy excess time. You can get excess air time for 75% off the regular rate. The drawback is you don't find out until the evening before when your ad will air, not a big deal. Also go for late night spots. You can sometimes get late night spots for as little as $10 a showing.
The rate cards they give you are a starting point for negotiation. You can get a lower price.
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Originally Posted by jasaunders
i actually copy this into my Google Notebook for further reading 
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