Now that’s a title. Yes. These actually work. They are proven. And you may not have heard some of these before.
Hello. Welcome to the Friday edition of the Marketing for Owners podcast, with me Jon Butt. Yes. That Jon Butt. The world famous one. Well maybe.
People from so many countries, all over the world listen to this podcast. It is fantastic. Thank you every single one of you.
If ever you want to write in, you want to ask me a question, something to do with your business. I answer all of them. Just write to Jon@MarketingForOwners.com.
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It’s as simple as that. Test it. Ask me something. Find out. I’m a real person. I answer.
If there are other things you’d like to know, just have a mousier around that www.MarketingForOwners.com website.
If you want to find out this by the way, this is a Friday edition. There’s going to be a weekend challenge. If you want to see more of those, www.MarketingForOwners.com/challenge, or have a look in the menu, check the dropdowns, there’s loads of things, mobile or web, or desktop laptop type thing. It all works beautifully.
Weekend Challenge
Normally for the weekend challenge, I give you something to work on, because I know, you’re naughty, you’re a business owner, you’re going to do some work, even though all your employees and your staff are relaxing in the sunshine, not doing any, not even thinking about work, till they get back there on Monday.
You are going to. So I’m going to give you something to do that is beneficial. Instead of working for the sake of working. Don’t you worry. I know how this goes. Been there. Done that. That’s how I used to be on weekends. Many years ago.
So pen, paper, pencil, pad, whatever you prefer, not the electronic, we like to write these down.
#1 Drop Letters or Cards into the Neighbors of Your Clients
So this could be, so if you, if you actually visit clients for real, whether it’s sales or whatever, and when you got a real client, have something preprinted. A letter or a card.
And go visit the next door neighbor on one side and possibly the next door neighbor to them and on the other side. Do this for every single client.
Have something written out, possibly a card that says, ‘We are so and so. We have just, say you are a landscape gardener.
We’ve just done, just created the most fabulous landscape garden for number xxx, your neighbor. If you want to see, want to know what a good job we can do, and what we could do for you, go and ask Mrs.… and fill it in.
Drop those in. This applies to business or anything, no matter what you do, give it to your delivery drivers. Give it to your sales reps. Give it to your service staff.
Get these dropped out, dropped in. imagine, it’s just free. Imagine. Imagine what happens if people phone up, and say ‘yeah could you come in and see ours too.’ Clever. Eh?
#2 Put Your Best Ad Copy on Your Vehicle
Now this is going to be controversial. Because when you’ve got a van or a truck or something, I know you want to put a massive great logo.
You want to put your name. You want everyone to know your name. You want everyone to see your logo. You are branding, so you think. But doesn’t that make you feel good seeing your vans and stuff out there and you think to yourself, people will notice them.
Well, sorry. People don’t care. They have zero interest in your name, or your logo. People are only interested in offers, special offers.
Now if you happen to use, say you use google AdWords, and you’ve done loads like us. In fire protection online since 2007, it’s nearly 10 years of tests.
We know our best performing google AdWords text. So why don’t us, the one that outperforms everything, gets the most clicks, gets the most people through. And you may have had AdWords and other things. So as they are quite sure, if we had vans, that is what we’d be printing on our vans.
The advert, the offer. Sure we’d have a logo, but it would be smaller. It won’t be the main thing. Just think about it. Also you could print that on the back of your business cards or somewhere like that. Use that Ad copy. It’s been tested.
#3 Print an Offer on the Back of Your Business Card
So, say you could print, you got ad copy. But it must have a call to action. But even better is an offer. Something, you don’t want just plain old inquiries, you don’t want people to put you in a patch. You want people to contact you.
You want people to become genuine leads, genuine customers. So put an offer on there. Perhaps you can have something like a some standard code that has your initials or the initials, and a bit of code, relating to the name of the person whose business card it is.
So that when someone contacts, it says, please mention this to get this month’s special offer. That person, you can then track it back to that person and give them commission, whatever it is.
But don’t just give out business cards. And please please please make sure there is something printed on the back of your card. But get them a free e-book or something.
Get them to sign up to something online. So they become a lead or they buy something. Please.
#4 Instead of Discounts, Give Trials of Other Services
And that generally means a free trial. So instead of saying something like for every, if you buy a cup of coffee or if you are going to coffee shop, instead of stamping a card that says, for every 5 of these, every 5 stamps, you get one free.
Or for a massage, instead of saying for every 5 massages get one free. how about for every 5 massages, get one body sugaring, not body sugaring, you know some kind of sugaring or waxing, hair removal, whatever other service you may do.
If its coffee, get them to try a free muffin or something like that. Because you don’t want to just give them a free coffee. They are going to buy a coffee, anyway. Because that’s why they came in. so no need to give them a new one.
Reward them but reward them by getting them to taste or test or try another service, that they may then end up paying for in addition to the other one. Yeah. Think it through.
Because you’re giving them free tester, and you are not giving away something not they are still paying at that visit.
#5 Hand Out a Signed Iron Clad Guarantee
Now this takes some nerves. How confident are you in your services? Are you good, are you good at what you do?
When, so for instance, when I meet one on one with clients, because I do do client work. If you are in the UK by the way, get in touch with me. Find out what I do.
I am not expensive. But I can help your business. And I can guarantee that I can help your business and I can make a difference to your business in 3 months.
That is guaranteed, to the extent if I met you face to face, I would be prepared to hand you a card, and write your name at the top, and then sign it, in front of you.
That says, I guarantee to give, I don’t know all your money back or whatever it says, if I do not perform the way, I said. Are you prepared to do that?
Now with your clients, you might think, but I’ve already had them, I have done the job. But you want to retain the client.
The more you stress your guarantee because you might say, but we got a great guarantee. Why hide it then? Tell them. Remind them.
Show them how confident you are, that your service is brilliant and then the less likely they are to claim on it.
If you gave, when you give products out, if you give a one year guarantee on them, on things that everyone else gives 30 days, that reduces the number of guarantee claims. It is a proven fact.
I know you don’t believe me. We do this. In our business, we give a 90 day guarantee for our fire safety equipment. And we pay to get it back. 100%. It’s called Risk Reversal, taking like all the risk.
But sign it. Don’t just give it out. It has more meaning. Have the card and say, I am going to sign this and again give it with your reps, your service personnel, everyone.
First of all, they take responsibility for the, making sure that the job is done correctly. Secondly, the customer will be so impressed. No one else is doing this.
#6 Create Expiration Dates for Your Products
If you want people to buy more of your products, you need to tell them how long it’s going to last for. It’s no good saying, this will last forever. Because no one believes you.
And the other thing is, that means they’ll never have to buy anything from you ever again. Why not tell them, that although this may last for 10 years, we give it a guarantee for 3.
We will tell you, this will last for sure for 3 years. After that, yeah you are probably going to spend extra.
But we recommend that 3 years, you replace this. You can continue with it, it’s great. But you may have then maintenance service cost.
Like with the car, people build cars, companies build cars that are reckoned to last. These days for 3 years, and up to a 100000 miles, and beyond that. That’s not the way they are made.
So think of that. Think of in your product or service, if you can say this is how long it’s likely to last. And then you pre sell them. The replacement.
So when you come along in 3 years time, you say, ‘How’s your product? You really ought to think about replacing this.’ This isn’t a surprise to them. They were told at the start.
Don’t worry about the competitors. We discussed that before. All this stuff works. Those 6 tips will get you extra sales and extra customers. And you want that. Don’t you? There you go.
Anyway that’s it. Have yourself a lovely weekend. Work on those. Think about them. You don’t have to use all 6, but if one helps your business, I will have a big smile like this on my face.
Enjoy the sunshine. Wherever in the world you are. And I’ll speak to you again soon. Bye.