Here are 5 very simple tips for getting more out of your limited marketing budgets. Many of these, some would say, are common sense but then if they are so damn sensible why isn’t everyone doing them? A gentle marketing 101 reminder of what works never hurts.

Tip 1: Know your customer

How well can you describe you average customer. Most business owners know the basics like age, gender household income etc If your really don’t know your customer then they are strangers to you, more importantly you’re a stranger to them. These days you really need to know your customers. You need to know things like what issues they have in their daily lives. How do they resolve these issues. Try and put yourself in their shoes and enter their world. Knowing your customer will put you in better position to set a promotional strategy for reaching them cost effectively.

Tip 2: Repetition builds Reputation
You want to expose your product or service, as often as possible, to consumers who will derive the most benefit from it. Studies show that the average consumer will see a promotion about five to seven times before taking action on the offer.

So instead of blowing your budget on a single opportunity to reach your select group, it is much wiser to get everyone’s attention with repeated promotions. Use as many different forms of advertising as you can afford and spread it out over the campaign period. This may involve launching the campaign with a bit of a bang and then going in to maintenance mode where adverts are smaller and/or less frequent. Use low cost email and internet marketing in the mix as it can be measured accurately to see the response to your messages.  Good negotiation skills come in handy when purchasing media space to squeeze the most out of your marketing dollars.

Tip 3: Always Look For Opportunities to Increase Sales
Simply put, sales drive business and sales come from customers; therefore, the hunt for new customers should be the first step of an ongoing three-step sales approach that every business owner should embrace.

The next step is to follow up with these new customers from time to time, and introduce them to additional offers. The objective of this second phase is to get them to buy from you more often. Make sure you keep a good client database and use a good CRM (customer relationship management) tool.

The final step of this three-pronged strategy is to offer expensive items, or bundle multiple items into higher-priced packages. This will give your customers more opportunities to make larger purchases.

If you know who your customers are, then going direct with personalised relevant promotions and information will have bigger impact. How?…

Tip 4: Use the Power of Email to Convert Customers
Email marketing is one of the most economical and reliable ways to build a relationship with customers and eventually convert them into buyers. Email is 70% more cost effective in a ROI basis than any other form of direct response marketing. It is an effective tool for staying in touch and developing the level of comfort and trust that is necessary before they will agree to do business with you.

You can use email to convince your subscribers of your expertise in your niche. The more they come to accept you as an authority, the greater your credibility will become and the easier it will be for you to make sales.

Tip 5: Mine your existing customer base

We’ve all heard that the easiest ways to increase your sales will be from you existing customer base. Most small to medium sized companies actually limit the amount of business their customers do with them. I know this sounds bizarre as no one in their right mind would restrict and limit customer purchases. When businesses fail to maintain an accurate customer database, they tend to waste a lot of marketing dollars.

The problem, of course is that it happens unintentionally. In fact, I’ll bet it’s happening in your business right now. Here’s how:

• Most businesses simply do not allow their prospects and customers enough opportunities to buy from them
• Businesses don’t offer enough chances to expand and continue the customer relationship for the long-term. One of the simplest and most immediate ways to turn this situation around is to find ways to stay in touch.

So, how do you get started? Force Yourself  to Create a Relentless, Yet Courteous and Helpful calling Program.

If you are a small business, set yourself the goal to go through your past customers list and call at least 5 people a day. Just to touch base, see how the last product or service they purchased from you is going for them.

Even if nothing results from the call you have had the opportunity to raise your profile to the top of their mind which will increase the chances of them calling you when they have a purchasing need.

Too busy to make the calls. Then script some key conversation points and get a colleague or staff member to make the calls. An outbound tele-services company may make it easier to uncover revenue you have missed by making more consistent contacts on your behalf.

Again, email is a very handy tool for keeping customers abreast of new products, special promotions and the latest announcements about your business. We have a great email tool called MagicMail that makes it easy for you to send fabulous branded emails to subscribers. It also doubles as an excelent customer database tool.

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