By Steven Schneidman
Here it is again the end of the relaxing summer. Here comes thebills for school, back to school accessories, the count down tothe holiday gifts and the searching out of that perfect holidaygetaway. The common theme is Money and plenty of it. There was atime when any business just needed a sign outside their door andpoof, people came in to buy from you. Twenty or thirty years agoit was unheard of for a lawyer, doctor, dentist and accountantto advertise for business. These were safe professions. Get intograd school and you were set for a comfortable life. Those daysare over! Welcome to the cold hard life of the twenty firstcentury.
Yes there is competition these days in every field but thesuccessful people are those who don't sit back and getcomplacent. What this means today is that you must reward yourpresent customers and give them a reason to stay with you andalso entice new customers to give you a try. The first problemis dealing with your existing customers. Never take a customerfor granted. A long with great service people appreciate whenyou let them know they are special and not just a number.Salespeople used to take customers out to lunch. Outside of ahandful of people, most people I know have incorporated theirlunch hour into their standard working hours. If you do take alunch, chances are it is a quick one and you're back to theoffice or doing some personal errands. How then do you thankyour existing customers. The market for promotional products hasexploded in the last 15 years. Buying buyers today is notacceptable, what is acceptable is giving them branded gifts ormoderate token gifts at periodic times like holiday periods orproduct launches.
If you want to get into the game, you must come up with clevergive away which is useful to the recepient and which doesn'tscream your compnay name to the point that they won't use it.The most repeat impact you can have is with coffee mugs orcalendars. Even with computer programs a lot of people stilllike to have a nice agenda where they can write important names,that won't be wiped out with a computer virus. There areliterally close to one million different items available. On mycompany web site you can browse over 700,000 items. My webaddress is www.solutionsink4u.com. How about giving out a thankyou gift for long time patronage. Think of something personalthey might like and have the packaging branded, either with alabel or custom bag or box. Today the biggest companies, TheGap, Sharper Image, Coach, Movado, Mont Blanc, American Apparel,Bella, Cutter and Buck, Cross, and Nike are all in thepromotional product industry. Hotels have gotten in the actgiving their better clients umbrellas when it's raining andcustomized chocolates on their bed before they retire. Going theextra mile really does help you retain your customer. Everybodymust be competitive but you don't have to be the cheapest.People remember the nice touches.
The second use is to attract new customers. Here you have theconventional way of advertising, newspapers, magazines, flyers,direct mail and cold calling. These are effective but tend to beexpensive and the return rate you get for your investment tendsto be low. A mass mailer with a response rate of 1.5% isconsidered a success. Consider for a moment that 98.5% of thepeople ignored your message. For the large companies it's builtinto their advertising budgets. Tricks for medium and smallbusiness are to target smaller more defined prospects and spendmore per prospect. The overall cost of your campaign will bemuch smaller and the response rate can be as high as 10 to 15%.An effective way to peak interest is to offer a specificdiscount to some or to come up with a contest with a prize whereno purchase is neccessary. Contests are fun, people always liketo win something and win or lose they tend to remember yourcompany's name or message associated with the contest. Todaythere are exciting ways to hold a contest on the web. Peoplelike the annonimity, have the freedon to register on theirtimetable and tend to see all the other stuff you have on yourweb site. Create your website in a way like an IKEA store, wherethe customer must see all your product before they can leave.
Other ways to capture this defined prospect market is to havegive aways at industry conventions. The captive market are yourideal customers . Firstly give aways bring people to your boothand secondly nice give aways are retained in their possessionfor a long time, reinforcing your company name. There areproducts today to meet any budget and are well worth theinvestment. if you land 1 or 2 good customers because of thepromotional product it tends to pay for itself, ten fold atleast.
If these ides make sense, but you still are unsure of what to donext, give me a call at 514-337-2238 or visit us on our web siteat www.solutionsink4u.com, yes we have a contest on our webpage. We practice what we preach. Best of luck with your magicwand. Steven Schneidma
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
