For many people, starting your own small business is the ultimate dream. But with the freedom of stretching your capabilities in all aspect of business, being your own boss does has its pros and cons, not to mention the stress of making ends meet, bringing home the dough and working extremely long hours in most start ups.
A little strategizing with your business planning could actually help you manage the new business startups. The key reason that I stress new business startups is such that you could start everything new and afresh but if you already have an existing business up, you could make the necessary adjustments to grow it effectively. Here are some of the key timeless small business marketing strategies that never fail to work.
What Is Your Key USP? – Unique Selling Proposition, That Is…
Brand your product into that perception niche that you wish to dominate you’re your authentic Unique Selling Proposition. Stand out from the mundane, shine bright with your USP, make and fulfil your promise to customers. If your USP is 1 hour delivery time within a 40 mile radius, then you should honour that promise, else your reputation will go down the drain. If your promise is to ensure that children who attend your tutoring classes will achieve at least one “A” grade for one subject within three months, you jolly well make sure that the children achieve what you promise the parents.
Customer Retention vs Customer Acquisition – Which Should You Choose?
Which is a cheaper option, customer retention or customer acquisition? The answer is obvious of course, it is Customer retention. Did you know that it costs about six times more to attract a new customer as it would to keep and milk an existing one? And research has shown that the success probability of selling to a new customer is 1 out of 16 as compared to that of 2.2 when selling to existing customers.
Yes, you would have to spend 6 times more money for new customer acquisition, money which could literally be spent on growing and building your existing customer base as well as forging more lucrative joint ventures with complimentary business partnerships. Of course with new business startups, you will surely need to spend on customer acquisition strategies in order to grow your customer list. The key to customer retention is relationship building with them to establish trust and credibility.
Cross-selling and Up-selling – How and When Should You Do It?
Cross selling and Upselling have become very successful as small business marketing strategies these days. Of course for new business startups you will need to spend time growing your customer lists, build bonding rapport with them before you start to sell to them. Indeed, it might be easier to cross sell to existing clientele in this environment of economic downturn as existing customers are already familiar with you and more trust has been built.
That said however, you should be very sure that you are not overtly pushy with your upsells as upsells mean selling more expensive items to your list. You need to know your clientele profiles sufficiently well in order to achieve your selling objectives, yet keep them loyal at the same time. From a needs perspective, customers must have a compelling need or want for your product to buy it. And your task is to invoke that desire to possess the product by expounding on the USP which meets their needs.
Stay tuned for part 2 of this series of New Business Startups – Timeless Small Business Marketing Strategies That Always Work. Yes, starting your own small business may not be as difficult as you are led to believe.
Check out Small Business Marketing Strategies for more information here.
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