One of the things I will help you with if you join The Owners Club or if you continue to listen to The Marketing for Owners Podcast which of course you will because you are very nice like that, is I will help you promote your business in the lowest cost and most effective ways. Most of the ways that I will explain to you are the ways that I do it.
Now you might think, “Oh, but Jon you have a business.” Well, let me tell you right now we are in the middle of starting a new one in a completely different niche, completely different audience and with a partner, I have a partner in this one and the partner is my seventeen year old son Harvey.
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We are starting that, it is a subscription service; if you know me you’re going to hear about it because there will be methods to launching it.
We have zero customers, the website is being designed at the moment. It is a particular type, it is not on WordPress because it is a subscription service it needs some eCommerce and subscription in the programming but it is still costing very little; but just to let you know on the day it is ready we have no customers, no customers and I do not have a pile of money and these are the things we will do.
And just to let you know, this actually sort of telling the world about your business came to me because many years ago I was following this truck and it was a parcel delivery service and their strap line or tagline was, “The delivery industry’s best kept secret”.
Now the funny thing is at the time we were looking for a new delivery company, a carrier, whatever you want to call it, shippers, and I just thought, “Best kept secret?”
I had never heard of them and in fact we didn’t even contact to them; but it just made me think because who needs to be the best kept secret? Why on earth wouldn’t you tell everyone about you? That is not there a great tagline.
So when you launch a business, or whether this is new or existing, have you told everybody you could tell? Have you used every method? So I’m going to start to list them off. Let is start with social media.
Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, Instagram, all of those probably more, I’m not going to mention all the others but they are all free. And of course, secondly each of them has a paid advertising version and Facebook if you want use Facebook you really do need to use paid advertising.
But in all of those you can tell people about it, you can even use social media giveaway and use a tool such as Gleam or Woobox or people like that.
Just go to those sites, gleam.io I think it is. But just to look these things up in Google, “Social media giveaway tools” or “Social media sweepstakes tools.” Yes, they will help you stay on the legal side, yes they work in the world, they know what they are doing. Rafflecopter is another one.
So those, are you using all those? Are you telling people? How about YouTube? Why not use YouTube? Set up a YouTube account, oh it is free, do a video, is that difficult? This is on an iPhone and this is on a balcony.
If you go to marketingforowners.com/podcast/ 664 you can see me in what has just become bright sunlight and so now the camera is struggling to focus on me because I am in bright sunlight and it has made my face go dark , sorry but who wants to see me? And I know what I look like.
You can of course create a podcast; again, it is free, that is what this is, this is a YouTube video that then just gets saved us an MP3 and becomes the audio for a podcast.
So two things, two results from the same action that gets a whole audience on iTunes. We put it out on the Stitcher, it is on Soundcloud, you can add it to Spreca. If you have not heard of these things, look them up. Don’t just sit there and say “I’ve never heard of those, I don’t know what those are.” Look them up, use them, they are free. Seriously.
Actually, you will be surprised that we get a couple of million downloads of this every year. Now you may think, “Is that all?” I think that is a lot, that is a lot, just a little old me with my iPhone. And what do I know about stuff?
Then of course you have your blog or your website. Are you updating it? Are you telling people what you are doing? Have you told the story of why your business exists?
The about, why you created it, what reason made you think of it, what happened, what made you invented that thing; what made you start to sell whatever it is you sell or to do gardening or becoming an Accountant or sell fire extinguishers or whatever it is or make shoes. What is the story? What did it?
Because quite often you create a business because you needed something and you couldn’t find it and you made it yourself, you scratched your own itch.
Tell people about it, those stories can be on your blog, on your website, on all those social media channels. Remember we talked recently about storytelling. In fact I think we got Melanie Diesel on tomorrow on Friday and she talks about storytelling. It’s all good stuff.
How about old fashioned stuff? I say old fashioned, it still works. Leaflet drops; either you can pay kids to do it locally through letter boxes of businesses, of homes; or you can again Google in your area, “Leaflet drop companies”, you will find wow, there are services that do it, it is very cheap.
Leaflets cost a penny, get like five thousand or ten thousand leaflets done, it will cost you about a hundred pounds, like a penny to have a double-sided A5, which is half letter size in America, leaflet, full colour leaflet printed; yeah, pennies.
And you don’t have to have them delivered, how about inserts? How about contacting your local newspaper or a company that delivers out to similar market and ask them to pop that leaflet in?
Why not give them a commission, a reference? Anyone who uses this code gets a reference that will pay you; anyone who signs up using your code, we will give you ten dollars; we will give you twenty percent, something like that to encourage the person to do it.
Or just say, “I will give you a hundred pounds if you put these in all your packages for the next six months.” (Or two months, or month.) Do you need me to tell you all the details? No.
How about good old direct mail? You might think, “The internet killed direct mail.” Look at your post every day, you might think it is annoying, you might think it is called junk mail. Why do you think people do it? Why do you think they spend a fortune printing all those fancy things? Putting little pens in envelopes and things like that? Because it works my friend.
And you think, well yeah, that costs a lot of money, but does it have to? Does it have to? Why not print some little offer coupon and put it in the post with your invoices and say, “Thanks for your business. As a valued customer we want to tell about our new thing. Here is ten percent off.” Here is five pounds off, ten dollars, etcetera.
Then how about this? And this is what we are going to do, so if you know me, I am preparing you. How about asking your friends to buy your product?
Now you might think, “Well I can’t do with that.” Why not? What’s wrong with your product? What’s wrong with your service? You might think, “Well, I am an Accountant, my friends don’t need me.” Or, “My friends know what I do, they would ask me.”
Seriously? Do you think that happens? That is complacency my friend; why not tell them exactly what you do and say, “If you ever want to use, I will give you a better price, I will give you a better deal.”
Why not just ask them? Or say, “Do you know anyone who would want this? Can you tell this? Can you spread the word? Can you forward this email on to ten friends? Thank you very much for your help. That’s what I am going to be asking you to do.”
Again, if I know your email and if you are family, I don’t care, I am going to ask my dad in Australia if he knows. We only sell in the UK, this new business, I am going to ask him to contact friends and family in the UK to forward it on and say, “Hey, my son Jon and my grandson Harvey are setting up this new business to help pay Harvey’s way through college. It is a great idea and it is lovely.”
Yeah? What do you think? I am going to contact every single person who is a contact who is in the UK on LinkedIn, every person who is a contact who is in the UK who is on Facebook and I probably have say five thousand on each. You are going to think, “Well, that is going to take you forever.”
Yes, I don’t need them all to become customers today, I am going to contact say ten or twenty a day on each and I am going to say something very nice, very much to the point and very sensible. Why don’t you do it? Or why don’t you outsource these things? Anyway, just tell the world about your business, simple.
Drive Time Podcast
It is Thursday, time for a drive time podcast and today we are recommending Biz Women Rock, which is by Katie Krimitsos.
They produce every week, thirty minutes, it’s for women in business; it’s great and I think that’s a good thing, there is not enough, there are plenty out there.
It doesn’t matter if you are a man or you are a woman, you hear it from a different point of view, they have got some great points of view; go listen. And don’t forget to enjoy Melanie Diesel tomorrow, she is great.
Have a great weekend as well.
