Real World businesses can use their website better than most

USING THE INTERNET to promote your business is not just for Internet-based businesses. It’s also a great way to promote your business if you have a storefront or work for commissions in a larger organization. Let’s take the steps one at a time.

First, determine something of value that you will give away as a free prize that requires an email address. For our example, let’s assume you own a small deli. Offer a free lunch or dinner up to a particular value each day or each week based on a drawing of all business cards or pieces of paper that are submitted with an email address. Clearly state that winners will be notified by email with a numbered notice that can be used to redeem the free meal. Let the patrons also know that you will use their email address to keep them current on what’s happening at their favorite deli– yours.

Next, when someone uses the notice to claim their meal, have them fill out a super simple form that asks for their name and what they thought of the meal, as well as permission to use what they said as a recommendation.

Now here’s the good part. Every so often, but not more often than about once a month, send out an email newsletter to all the email addresses you have accumulated. Use the newsletter to inform your customers of specials or changes. Also, print a few of the recommendations from the free meal winners. Make sure you provide them a way to cancel the subscription to your newsletter. You want happy customers, not unhappy ones!

You’ve just created an effective and inexpensive marketing campaign that will bring old and new customers back again and again. You also have a way of explicitly targeting your
actual customer base with specials and other deals they’ll love.

The power of the Internet is not just available to fancy “dot com” companies. Any business, especially yours, can take advantage of this technology. Isn’t it time you did?

10 Ways Outsourcing Can Help Grow Your Business

OUTSOURCING, OR SUB-contracting is when you hire outside professionals or services to take on part of your business workload. You may want to outsource part of your work because you don’t have the room, you need an expert, you have occasional busy periods, or you need more production to get orders out on time, etc.

The following are ten ways outsourcing can save your business time and money.

You won’t have to take the time to train employees. This will allow you to spend more time working on your marketing and advertising campaign.
You won’t have to spend time on consuming tasks like adding new equipment or learning new software to complete certain tasks. This will allow you to spend more time testing your advertisements.
You won’t have to interview employee candidates. This will allow you to spend more time improving your customer service, and in return you will get more repeat purchases.
You won’t have to fill out all the employee paper work like tax forms, scheduling, retirement plans, etc. This will allow you to spend more time developing new products.
You won’t have to buy extra office or work space to complete certain tasks. You can use all the money you save on other business expenses.
You won’t have spend money on employee costs like taxes, medical, vacation time, holidays, workers comp., unemployment costs, etc. (These may vary depending on which country you do business in.)
You can speed up you order and delivery system with the extra help. Your customers will appreciate the fast service and the chances that they will buy from you again will increase.
You could expand your market share by becoming a middleman and offering your subcontractors products or services. This will increase your business profits and give you multiple income streams.
You can take on extra or large orders your business couldn’t handle before. This will expand your market share and you could also offer to take the work your competition can’t handle.
You could end up receiving orders from your subcontractors. Your subcontractors may also tell other people about your business.

Yummy! Yummy! Good for Your Tummy!

I’M NOT MAKING that line up. We must have heard the owner of a Sunshine Coast vendor repeat that line a hundred times as he handed out samples of his delicious Sate Chicken.

We’ve mentioned in the past that a chicken vendor at one of our local malls attracts the lion’s share of lunch customers by simply handing out free samples of his bourbon chicken. It is so delicious, that it is difficult to keep walking past his stand without buying.

Well, apparently, chicken vendors in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast are aware of the power of samples too. Because as we searched for a place for lunch in the shopping mall’s massive food court, we could hear in the distance, ‘Yummy! Yummy! Good for Your Tummy!’

We were so hungry by this time that we were drawn like a magnet to this unusual and hilarious chant.

It was difficult to see where this chant was coming from because there was such a large crowd surrounding the stand. You can imagine our surprise as we edged our way through the crowd to see a smiling, enthusiastic Sate Chicken vendor passing out sample after sample of Sate Chicken while repeating his slogan.

I feel sorry for the other vendors in his vicinity, because they hardly stand a chance. The only bigger crowd than the one around him and his samples, was the one at his cash register ordering the full meal.

Samples help you sell. Give people what they want. Think of how much easier it is for a person to decide if they want your product of not, when they can sample it.

We provide hundreds of marketing samples on our Web site and in this Newsletter so our potential customers can get to know, like, and trust us.

Ice cream stands provide free samples, OptusNet and other ISPs provide slabs of hours of their service for free so you can sample it. Software vendors do it by letting you use the program for 30 days for free.

How are you using free samples to help sell your products and services? With a little creative thought, you can use this powerful technique to explode your sales.

Do you know of a good restaurant?

ON ANOTHER DAY, at the end of a tour of a museum and gallery in the Glass House Mountains, we asked our guide if she could recommend a local restaurant.

She did better than that. In addition to her hearty recommendation, she gave us two discount coupons for the place she recommended.

Pretty impressive. This is called a Joint Venture.

The local restaurant owner obviously knows something about giving a little to get a lot and knew that tourists get hungry after a morning tour. So he approached the tour guides and asked if they would like a supply of discount coupons to pass on to their tour groups who might be looking for a casual, but comfortable dining experience.

And why wouldn’t the guides want to provide their guests with recommendations and coupons to a restaurant that they enjoy themselves? Perhaps the guides get a free meal once a week for their recommendations.

Joint Ventures, where two or more companies help one another, are an excellent way to attract business that you would not have otherwise have gotten.

How About a Donut?

Now, this didn’t happen, but I wish it would have. Our savvy hot dog marketer still has room for improvement.

Also available at his hot dog stand were delicious looking hot donuts. But he never asked us if we would like one to go with our hot dogs.

Now, you may say, he probably assumed that if we wanted a pretzel, we would have asked for one. Or you may think he would have been pushy suggesting more products.

Folks, if you have such thoughts, please listen carefully, because those thoughts are costing you thousands of dollars in lost sales.

The only way you can know if a person wants something you have is by making an offer. Then they will have to make a decision — yes, or no. You are not being pushy by offering your customers something else that you know they will enjoy or benefit by. Customers want you to suggest.

Your customers are not always thinking of your products. They have a million other things on their minds.

For instance, once I had ordered our hot dogs, I had to think about what we wanted on our hot dogs; what we wanted to drink and how I was going to hold everything and pay him at the same time. Plus, I had to think about a place for Wid and me to sit down to enjoy our meal. I wasn’t thinking about his donuts at that time.

But, I can guarantee you, that if he had said to me, ‘I can give you a special price on donuts today — if you buy two, I can give you another one free! How does that sound to you?’ I would have said, Cool mate, go for it!’

Wid and I would have been happy, and he would have been happy.

But he didn’t offer, so I didn’t buy. Oh well, nobody’s perfect. There’s always room for improvement.

There is no better time to sell your customers something more, than when they are already in a buying mood. Give your customers a special offer on another related product or service that will benefit them, when they are already in the process of buying something from you.

You may wonder, ‘Why should I give them a discount on this second product or service? Shouldn’t I make them pay full price?’

You can test it and see. But, more often than not, by giving your customers a ‘special’ deal for the moment, you will get many more accepting your offer. Keep in mind, that the profit on this additional sale is profit that you wouldn’t have had.