Tom Feltenstein - 501 Killer Marketing Tactics

operation to those who have not yet patronized your business. Make sure
your stationery is consistent with your business cards, your color scheme,
and your brand personality.
All of these printed materials should have full contact information,
including your Web site and e-mail address, and any imagery that helps
define who you are and what you do.
8. Themes and Slogans
Choose a group of words that summarizes your company or its prime
benefits. Pick one you can live with—you should use the theme as long
as possible. It can be informational, inspirational, and even funny.
“Don’t leave home without it” and “We bring good things to life” are
well-known examples. A Philadelphia-based publishing company, Xlibris,
which provides publishing services directly to writers, says it is “Where
writers become authors.” A disaster-recovery service that cleans up smoke
and water damage has a great slogan: “Like it never happened.”
Here are a few clever slogans, collected by a newspaper in Edmonds,
Washington:
“Nobody knows the truffles we’ve seen.” Truffle merchant.
“Your pane is our pleasure.” Window-cleaning company.
“Take a spin with us.” Laundromat.
“Let us steer you in the right direction.” Butcher.
“We dry harder.” Concrete products company.
“Let us remove your shorts.” Electrician.
“We’re number one in the number two business.” Septic service.
“After the first whiff, call Cliff.” Septic service.
“We don’t want an arm and a leg . . . just your tows!” Towing
company.
“Get your buns in here.” Pastry shop.
“It’s great to be kneaded.” Massage therapist.
“Spouses selling houses.” Husband and wife real estate agents.
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“We’re easy to get a lawn with.” Turf farm.
“We curl up and dye for you.” Hair salon.
Even a slogan is a promotional tactic if it’s memorable. Once again,
check out your competition and see what others are doing, and consider
hiring a copywriter to give you some ideas.
9. The Whole Package
Your business is just like a box of Valentine’s chocolates. What you’re selling,
in most cases, is a commodity—like chocolate and sugar. But it
comes in a heart-shaped box covered in shiny red paper, wrapped with a
bow, and lined inside with tissue, and the intricately shaped candies are
neatly arranged in their own cubbyholes in fluted wax paper cups, all in
a shiny gold plastic tray. Opening it is an experience: it feels special, and
there are delightful surprises once you’ve gone through the ritual. You
should think of your business the same way.
Back in the days when McDonald’s was smaller and closer to its roots,
store managers had to wash and polish the outsides of their buildings
once a week. Starbucks is a success story because the company put the
millions it could have spent on advertising into decorating its stores.
The elements that go into making an experience special and leaving
your customers wanting more include your staff, your physical location,
your delivery vehicles, your promotional pieces, and your products and
services. How you package yourself will either attract or repel customers.
Look at your business as a total package, from the curb to the bathrooms.
Think about all of it, from the design and traffic flow right down
to the look of your printed promotional pieces.
10. Maintaining Your Edge
Customers form instant opinions about your business based on how you
maintain your establishment. You may not notice what’s worn out or dirty
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or smudged, but your customers will, even if it’s only on a subliminal
level. Everything counts.
Put a fresh coat of paint on your building, or at least touch up the trim.
Repaint the stripes on your parking lot. Work your way through all the
zones of your business. Try to imagine what it’s like to see it for the first
time. If you’re having trouble doing that, ask someone else to do it for you.
Are there cigarette butts ground out in front of the door? Is there gum
stuck on the sidewalk? Is there trash in the gutter? Is the glass greasy with
fingerprints? Is the awning torn, faded, or dusty? Are your signs clean and
freshly painted, or have letters disappeared in the latest windstorm? Are
the restrooms always spotless and well stocked?
Pay careful attention to maintenance, and customers will come back
and will recommend your business to new prospects.
11. Size Matters
The size of your business may influence whether people buy. Bigger is
not always better. For some customers, bigger is off-putting.
If you want to see a large selection of door chimes, you’ll definitely
want to go to a giant home improvement store where part of an entire
aisle is devoted to every imaginable type of door chime. But you might
not want to go to the trouble of looking for a place to park and fighting
the crowds just to buy a small house plant for Mom on Mother’s Day.
As the owner of a small business, you can defeat the big guys by focusing
on providing a caring, warm environment and a good product or service
selection. Establishing yourself as the friendliest, most personal place
in town will win out over the big guys any day.
12. The Price Should Be Right
Although good customer service executed with a smile is the single most
important reason that customers patronize one business rather than
another, price is a factor for about one in seven.
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Look at the competition in your business category, look at your market,
and decide where you are in the pricing universe—low, medium, or
high. If your current pricing is high, you’d better be offering your customers
something extra to justify it, and you’d better be in a market that
supports premium pricing. If your current pricing is low, and you intend
to keep it that way, brag about it.
In any case, make sure that your pricing levels fit your market and
your concept.
13. Internal Customer Attitude Check
It is a basic principle of promotional tactics that motivated, smiling
employees attract loyal customers. Yet one of the hardest concepts to get
across to business owners is that your employees and your staff should be
treated as customers. You can do all the clever marketing in the world,
but if your staff isn’t on board, if your employees aren’t engaged and
enthusiastic, the results will be unsatisfying.
You should be asking your employees on a regular basis, by way of
employee satisfaction surveys, what they think about everything you do
and how they feel about working for you.
Start with input from every single manager in your business. It’s their
neighborhood, it’s their career, and they should have a sense of ownership
in any plan you come up with.
Managers always have something to complain about. Let them.
Everybody needs to vent, and you need to leave your ego at the door.
You want the truth, not a response that makes you feel good. You want
a candid evaluation from every internal customer, from your top-line
managers right down to the guy who vacuums the floor. What do they
really think about the product or service, the pricing, the atmosphere—
all of it?
Managers are notorious for having great ideas but either feeling
uncomfortable about speaking up or simply not having time to do so in
the rush of everyday business. You want to give them a sense that you
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really want their opinions on what the opportunities in the business are
and what the strengths and weaknesses are. Even if you don’t agree with
all of their opinions, you’ve made your managers your partners.
When you get down the ladder to your staff, you must make sure that
your internal customer survey provides your employees an opportunity
to give you an anonymous opinion about what they think of your business.
These are the people who make or break you.
At the start of this process, you may be nervous: “The staff is just going
to slam us.” That’s not always the case, but if people do slam you, you
might deserve it. The insights that come out of these surveys frequently
surprise business owners and managers.
You might even think, “My people aren’t that bright,” only to discover
that they are not only bright but caring and filled with valuable knowledge
and insight. You just never asked them.
You can find standard forms online that you can either use as is or
customize to suit your particular business. One vendor is AllBusiness.
com. There are services that allow you to set up a survey online,
although doing it in person is the only way to guarantee participation.
Ask around, do some research, and find the form that’s right for you.
The internal customer survey must be self-administered and
absolutely confidential. If it isn’t, you’re wasting time. The answers won’t
be honest or useful. Put a staff member in charge of this process and hold
an all-company meeting. Tell the members of your staff why they’re being
asked to fill out the survey, that their feedback will be taken seriously,
and that the survey will be totally anonymous.
To demonstrate that you mean what you say, have your employees
drop their completed surveys into a preaddressed FedEx box that is sealed
in their presence for shipping to a research company or some other objective
consultant for tabulation. There are many companies that do this for
a reasonable fee.
Don’t try to tabulate these results yourself. You’ll defeat the purpose,
and you won’t get honest answers. Build trust and you get trustworthy
employees.
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In your survey, ask your employees how they feel about themselves;
how they feel about the company as an employer; and what they think
about the marketing, about the culture, and about diversity in the workplace.
You may not want to change some things, but you should know
what your staff thinks before you go out and spend a fortune on your next
set of uniforms or new office equipment.
How do your employees feel about the salary and benefits you offer
compared with those offered by other companies in the area? Of course,
they’re going to think their salary and benefits are lower, but often that
issue can be handled very simply. If you know they’re misinformed, you
can go out and do a little research yourself. If you’re right, hold a staff
meeting and show your employees in black and white that the grass is not
really greener on the other side. You may, in this situation, even find that
you’re able to reinforce some of the benefits that you do offer, benefits that
your staff may not know about or understand.
If they’re right, maybe you have a clue to the reasons for your high
turnover, low quality of staff performance, or any of a host of other issues.
Ask your employees in this survey if they see your business as a place
they would recommend to friends or associates as a place to patronize. If
your employees would not recommend you, you have a huge opportunity
for improvement.
These surveys should give a total score for the store (or store by store,
if you have more than one outlet). However, within each store, they
should be broken down by category or employee activity. In the food service
business, which employs more people—12 million—than any other
industry, you would want your results broken out to reflect attitudes in
the back of the house (kitchen staff), the front of the house (dining room
and bar staff), and management. In an auto dealership, you’d break it
down by service (garage and service desk separately), parts, sales (used
and new), accounting, and so on. Even the people who manage your
parking lot should be included and reported. Be creative and look inside
your four walls to see who your internal customers are, what categories
they naturally fall into, and how they can be surveyed.
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What you do with the results of this survey is study your business to
see the big picture and a lot of smaller pictures that make it up. Look for
opportunities to correct problems and build on advantages. Listen with
an open mind.
See my book The 10-Minute Marketer’s Handbook and visit my Web
site, www.tomfeltenstein.com, for more details on the survey.
14. Customer Attitude Check
As well as taking an employee survey, you should be regularly taking the
temperature of your customers with a customer attitude profile survey.
There are many forms that can be found through marketing supply companies
that specialize in this area.
In a busy retail operation, the survey should be done over a period
of several days so that you have a representative sample of your customers.
If you are in a retail business that is open seven days a week,
do your survey on two weekdays and two weekend days. In most companies,
business is heaviest later in the week, so the best days would
be Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If you are in the food service
business and you’re open for lunch and dinner, your survey should
be done at both times. It should be done during each marketing part
of the day.
In any sort of retail business, the survey should be done during your
busiest periods, without cutting corners or taking shortcuts. If you happen
to be in a business that offers a product or service that is purchased
with less spontaneity, the same idea applies, with some creativity.
The information you get from this survey is a demographic breakdown
of your customers: their age range, their ethnicity, the number in
a party (if you are a restaurant), how often they patronize your business,
whether they are male or female. The survey tells you who your target
audience is. If you know who your customers are now, you know which
part of your neighborhood you should market to, without shouting over
the heads of people who aren’t your prospects. This survey will provide
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real statistical data—it is far more accurate than trying to estimate your
target audience based on who is coming through the front door.
You will use this information, such as frequency, to determine the
number of visits required for any frequency discount. If your survey shows
that you have a frequency per customer of 2.6 visits per month, you might
set your frequency premium at four visits a month to encourage a 50 percent
increase. Many business owners have a tendency to set the number
of visits required for a frequency premium high, often at 10, hoping that
this will, in time, result in a large increase in sales. You want your promotions
to be easy and accessible. You want your customers to get the
benefit sooner rather than later.
In some industries there are national databases that calculate the average
national frequency of visits in each category. If the national average
for your category of business is 2.67, and your frequency is lower than
that, you have room for improvement.
In massaging this information, break down the frequency results into
subcategories: what percent patronize once a month, twice a month, and
so on. If 10 percent of your customers visit your business four times a week,
they are already above-average visitors without any incentive. Don’t focus
your marketing on them. If 15 percent visit once a week or more, your goal
might be to move them up to the next category: visiting two to three times
a week, or even four times a week. That would have a huge impact on sales.
The survey should also collect information on customer satisfaction.
How many of your customers rate you excellent on product quality, service,
and atmosphere? How do your customers rate you versus your competitors?
It may reassure you and stroke your ego to know that your
customers say you’re great on your own, but those results often conflict
with what your customers say when they rate you against the competition.
If only 25 percent rate your business better than your competitors’
on quality and service, that means that three out of four of your customers
think that you’re the same or worse. You’re lacking a competitive edge
when your customers have four places to choose from and there isn’t
much that’s distinguishing you.
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Interviewing customers is something that many business owners and
managers hate doing. They may respect their customers’ privacy, or they
may be afraid to hear bad news, or they may be uncomfortable having that
sort of conversation with people. But customers love to talk about themselves
and their experiences. You can use a simple card with 20 questions
on it and a check-off system, with ratings from best to worst. This often
works well in busy places so long as your staff is trained to encourage customers
to fill out the cards.
Customers in businesses in upscale categories prefer being interviewed.
You can hire interviewers, but the people that consultants hire
for these positions often aren’t up to snuff, and they don’t know your business.
Make sure that you’re training interviewers well about exactly how
you want the survey done.
It’s useful to train one employee for that responsibility, someone who
normally works in a different location or doesn’t usually have contact
with customers. This helps reduce the possibility of skewed results caused
by customers who have a personal knowledge of your staff.
Always conduct your survey after customers have had their transaction
experience. Let them know that you’re doing a survey, and ask
politely if they will fill out the form or answer the questions. Select attractive
young men and women with good people skills to collect your data.
Be sure you design a survey or an interview that takes just a couple of
minutes to complete.
See my book The 10-Minute Marketer’s Handbook and visit my Web
site, www.tomfeltenstein.com, for more details on the survey.
15. Time Flies
Life has speeded up, people are busier than they’ve ever been, and customers
consider the reception they receive in most businesses deplorable.
People hate slow service, even when it isn’t. They also resent being
rushed, even when they aren’t. Being left on hold or made to wait has
lost more sales for more businesses than any other single cause.
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Make sure someone acknowledges customers within moments of
their encountering your business. Even, “Hello. How are you? I’ll be with
you in just a moment” is better than risking the impression that you don’t
care. Mary Kay, the late cosmetics mogul who built an empire creating
customers one at a time, put it best when she said, “Everyone has an
invisible sign around their neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.’”
16. Ready When They Are?
Unless you’re in a mall or some similar selling environment, there are
no rules that say that you can be open only the same hours as your competition
or the rest of the world.
You can often steal business from your competitors by opening earlier
or later. If longer or different hours meet your market and concept
criteria, you may be surprised at the result. A dentist I know decided to
work on Sundays and discovered that patients really appreciated being
able to schedule appointments that didn’t conflict with their work. They
told their friends, and his business grew. A hair salon I know of decided
to open Mondays, only because none of its competitors did. Soon, Monday
became the most profitable day of the salon’s week.
17. Phoning It In
We all know what the problems are with phone etiquette and service, so
it’s hard to understand why so many businesses ignore this critical gateway.
When a potential customer has a bad experience phoning you, you
rarely get a second chance.
Have some friends pretend to be shoppers and phone your business
with questions. Make sure that your phone system is easy to use and that a
real person is always available to answer a question. Is your staff answering
correctly, paying attention to customers, solving problems, and creating
customers? Are messages taken accurately and answered promptly? Does
your phone system have a special busy message with some sort of back-
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ground music? Give callers who are on hold information about your hours
of operation, specials, your Web site, and so on. If you depend on the phone
for a significant part of your incoming business, make it a top priority.
18. Mail Bonding
From the day you open your business, you should be building a customer
mailing list. There are many tactics in this book that help you to do that
efficiently and gracefully, without invading your customers’ privacy. This
database is a central tool in your promotional program. Such targeted
marketing is highly efficient, easily measured, and produces high returns.
Be sure to enter all this data into a flexible computer program on a
timely basis. Don’t let little slips of paper pile up in a shoebox until you
have so many that nobody has time to enter them. You’ll want to collect
the usual information, including e-mail addresses, and you will learn the
importance of other data, such as birthdays and buying habits. The
longer your list becomes, the larger your profits.
Send mailings to your list on a regular basis, and be sure to update
your database with address changes. Even if a customer moves out of
your trading area, if that customer continues to hear from you, she or he
will often feel special enough to make the trip—and to bring friends!
Repeat mailings reinforce your bond. Studies show that customers on
average need to be “touched” six times by your marketing before they
become motivated enough to purchase.
19. Your Window on the World
You don’t have to be in the retail business for windows to matter—the same
visual impact theory applies. There’s no reason that an auto mechanic has
to have ugly, static windows. It’s all part of marketing and promotion.
Retailers should change their window displays often. This creates excitement
and projects one of the most important concepts in marketing:
“New!” Use your windows to announce promotions and special events.
Must-Do Business Tactics ✹ 27

Decorate seasonally and use awnings, shutters, lights, plants, pictures,
signage, and so on to create the appropriate mood. Your “face” should
be attractive, inviting, exciting, and fresh so that people will be curious
to know what’s inside the package.
20. Signs of Life
Are your walls cluttered with crookedly taped, out-of-date community
announcements or covered with the same tired pictures of covered bridges
that have been there for years? Or are they simply blank because you never
had the time to decorate? Your four walls are one of your most important
promotional tools, even the walls of your bathrooms. You control the
walls! Every customer sees them. They are where you get to create the
perfect atmosphere, announce specials, engineer clear traffic flow, make
the customers’ experience a pleasure, and make your sales grow.
Posters, banners, and reader boards are great marketing tools. They
act as silent salespeople to encourage impulse purchases. Design them
attractively, in keeping with the image of your business and decor, and
place them where they’ll be seen.
21. Outside the Box
We live in a forest of signs and advertisements. It’s hard to stand out, but
it can be done with careful thinking and planning. A well-lit, attractive
outside sign is always worth the investment; it makes your business easily
identifiable at night and serves as a continuous advertisement even
when you’re closed.
Think creatively. A restaurant I know of faced a court battle to get
zoning permission to erect a sign at the curb. Rather than go to war with
the town, the manager had a couple dozen auto shades made up with
the business logo prominently displayed. All employees were instructed
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to park their cars facing the street and to place the shades in the windshields
with the logos facing out. The effect was even more exciting than
a plain sign would have been.
Signage should always be clear and well maintained. Nothing says
careless like burned-out bulbs, missing letters, torn banners, and peeling
or faded paint.
22. Spreading the Wealth
There are so many ways today to get services and products to market that
there is no excuse for most businesses to ignore as many of them as they
do. Your wares can be sold in the stores of others. If a bookstore can sell
coffee, why couldn’t a coffee shop sell books? If you market earth-friendly
detergents, couldn’t you find a plumber who’d like to make a little extra
money selling septic-safe laundry soap? The possible combinations are
limited only by your imagination.
You can market just about anything by telephone, so long as you aren’t
violating do-not-call registries or otherwise offending potential customers.
If you are in the carpet business, why not recruit a cheerful, competent
staff member to sit down with the phone book and call every lawyer in town
offering a free estimate and an attractive discount on office carpeting? If
you are an electrician, you could call every small retailer in town and offer
a free safety and surge inspection with a discount on some basic service.
You can also follow up on any of these calls with a faxed offer. Make sure
it has an expiration date that is no more than a month away.
Direct mail is a major way to stimulate sales, not just make people
aware of you. Mailings should always offer something of value if customers
act within a specific period. Product lists, service menus, and special
deals are all part of a mailing program.
Part of your marketing plan should be to grow your distribution so
that it is as wide as possible.
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23. More than Lip Service
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of books have been published on the
subject of customer service, but many companies still just don’t get it.
Good customer service, and all that it entails, is the key to success.
“Make me feel important” is all that customers ever want in a business
transaction. Every study confirms that consumers put this at the
top of their list of factors when they are deciding where to buy. No matter
how fabulous your product may be, poor service will drive away customers.
Alternatively, people who get good service will remember you
and come back even when the product didn’t exactly meet their needs
or expectations.
Most studies show that 40 percent of customers who have a bad service
experience tell their friends. Less than 20 percent tell their friends
about a good experience. If you can get rid of the bad service, you’re
already winning. If you can replace it with consistently good service,
you’re batting a thousand!
24. After-Marketing
A sale is only the first step toward creating a customer. What you do after
that is what creates loyalty and repeat business, the easiest sales increase
to generate. It’s much more costly to get a new customer than to stimulate
an existing customer to become a more frequent buyer.
This is the key to a loyal customer base and to referrals. Maintain a
VIP list of regular customers and mail to them regularly. Send them
birthday cards. Offer them special services or products aimed just at
them. Send them thank-you letters for referrals.
Make sure your staff members thank customers for coming. If you
offer any kind of valet service, don’t forget that attitude and efficiency are
the last and lasting impression that your customers will be receiving about
your business.
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25. Complaints Are Your Best Friend
The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote, “All happy families resemble
one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Every complaint that your business receives should be viewed as a
golden opportunity because every unhappy customer gives you a chance
to show how uniquely you care about his or her satisfaction. Every
employee should be fully aware that you have a policy of never arguing,
rarely disagreeing, and always trying hard to fix whatever’s wrong. Burn
it into your culture that 90 percent of unhappy customers never complain,
at least not to you. Instead, they don’t come back, and then they
tell all their friends.
Ford Motor Company once did a study that found that satisfied customers
tell eight people and dissatisfied customers tell 22. The Internet
has probably increased that statistic manyfold. Handling complaints is
an essential promotional tactic. Do everything you can to address each
and every one. Make sure that your staff is empowered to make decisions
when a supervisor isn’t available to do it for them.
Ritz-Carlton Hotels gives its frontline employees spending authority
up to $2,000 to take care of their customers’ needs. A member of the
housecleaning staff can offer a guest a complete refund on the room if
the guest is dissatisfied. When a guest in one of the hotel restaurants isn’t
pleased with the meal, the server can refund her money on the spot and
give her a certificate for a free dinner in the future.
One of the highest values that customers look for in a transaction, and
in the businesses they deal with, is a no-risk satisfaction guarantee. Make
sure you give it, and forget about the cost because whatever the cost is,
you’ll usually end up making more on the goodwill you’ve created. It’s
surprisingly easy to turn an unhappy customer into a loyal customer.
When employees are empowered to make customer service decisions
on the spot, their self-esteem and company pride go up. The person who
has a complaint feels better and is likely to become a repeat customer.
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Too often we put an employee behind the front desk or counter,
make the desk too high, the information confusing or wrong, and
the room too hot or too cold, then wonder why the employee can’t
function. Why not understand what the customers want, set the standard,
and involve the employees in creating the process? With this
approach, everyone becomes warm and friendly, and everyone knows how
to up-sell.
26. Hire Eagles, not Turkeys
Ross Perot once said, in discussing how to hire good people, “Eagles don’t
flock. You have to find them one at a time.”
When discussing this most important aspect of marketing, I often hear
the same tired responses: “You can’t get good help.” “Nobody cares about
customer service anymore.” “I can’t afford to hire the good people.”
“These kids today. . . .”
I know it’s hard to find eagles in the huge flock of turkeys that are out
there looking for “a job.” All the turkeys have learned to dress up like
eagles, so we hire them thinking they’re eagles, and when they start acting
like turkeys, we figure it’s a training problem. Then, when the training
program doesn’t help, we figure it’s a motivational problem, and we
institute a motivational program. But if that eagle really is a turkey, things
won’t improve, and we end up with a trained, motivated turkey.
You should be constantly on the lookout, one by one, for people who
shine, and try to keep them as long as possible. Whatever business you’re
in, it should be a caring business. Look for people who are naturally
gifted in the art of relating.
You will find a number of tactics in this book for doing just that: giving
a bonus to employees who find a successful candidate, asking your
customers to recommend people, and going out yourself and handing
job application invitations to people who give you excellent customer
service elsewhere.
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Every person who works in your business is a sales representative,
even the receptionist in a law firm or a dentist’s office. Each and every
person who is in contact with your customers must be trained to sell your
products and services with a smile.
27. Sampling Is Simple
No matter what business you’re in, sampling will help customers remember
you. This is standard procedure in many food-related businesses, but
the same principle applies in many other businesses.
Sampling does not always have to take place within your establishment.
If you are in the food business, you can deliver samples to area
businesses at lunchtime. If you own a bookstore, you can give away free
copies of novelty books or magazines or the local weekly newspaper.
Often you can partner with a vendor who will give you a special price for
samples to be given away. Look around your business and try to find
something of value that your customers would appreciate having and
would be likely to come back and buy in the future.
Keep tabs on how well the samples are received, and measure the
sales of the item being sampled while the promotion is taking place and
in the weeks after.
28. Credit Where It’s Due
The easier you make the purchase, the more people will buy. It’s worth
the cost and paperwork to accept as many credit cards as possible. Nothing
is more of a turnoff, or an embarrassment, to a customer than being
short of cash and having to write a check.
If your business is small and you haven’t been able to justify the setup
costs for a credit card machine, consider partnering with another business
to process your credit card sales. Even service businesses like lawyers
and accountants should be able to accept credit cards.
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29. High Finance
Individual charge accounts for customers create increased business.
Especially in an upscale establishment, a customer’s ego will be stroked
when he can simply sign for the bill. Giving credit can be tricky, so make
sure you carefully credit-check anyone to whom you offer a charge
account. And make sure you manage your receivables so that charge
accounts don’t get too big before you discover you’ve got a deadbeat on
your hands.
30. A Word from Our Sponsor
One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make is to advertise poorly,
in the wrong media, at the wrong time, with the wrong message. More
money is squandered on bad advertising than on any other aspect
of marketing. Too often, businesses shout over the heads of potential
customers, target the wrong group, or send inefficient or confusing
messages.
Avoid the shotgun approach—mass communication. If you own
a sporting-goods store, why would you spend thousands of dollars to run
a boring ad in a large newspaper that reaches thousands of people who
live outside your trading range? Yet marketers do this all the time.
Don’t guess about advertising. Consider hiring a professional to help
you create great ads, and make sure that every single ad you run includes
a specific offer, such as a discount or a free sample, with a specified time
limit. This is crucial to advertising promotions.
An ad that says, “We’re the friendliest veterinarian in town,” is never
going to be as successful as an ad that says, “Come in by the end of the
month and get a free month’s supply of tick repellent.” Or if friendliness
is one of your strong points, tell people, “Come and visit us, and if our
staff doesn’t smile, your purchase is free.” Then make sure your employees
smile!
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31. Communing with the Community
You will find a number of promotional tactics in this book that involve partnering
with or reaching out to your community. The more you get involved
in your community, the higher your profits will be. This takes time and
legwork more than money. Schools, charities, hospitals, religious institutions,
and nonprofits of every stripe are good places to start. Consider adopting
a favorite charity and collecting toys or food during the holiday season.
32. Coalitions of the Willing
One of the most overlooked opportunities in marketing is the chance to
leverage your business with another noncompeting business. The possibilities
are unlimited, from cross-promotional display signs and circulars,
to special offers for specific products and services, to event partnerships,
to sharing mailing lists and advertisements.
Potential cross-promotion partners include high-customer-count businesses
such as gas stations, video stores, department stores, movie houses,
and sports arenas. Choose quality operations that are traditionally respected
for their products and service. Businesses should be conveniently located
within the same trading zone, preferably only a few blocks away.
Cross-promotion partners will usually involve an equal trade-off: you
distribute a real estate agent’s business card or flyer, and the real estate
agent provides newcomers to the community with your brochure and a
special invitation.
The benefits are manifold. You can quickly increase your marketing
base, cut your marketing costs, and gain goodwill.
33. Going Public
Another frequently overlooked and even more frequently misunderstood
opportunity is free publicity for an event or promotion. Charity promo-
Must-Do Business Tactics ✹ 35

tions and benefits will get you noticed. If you cannot afford a public relations
agency, you can become your own. Call your local newspaper or
radio station. Tell it about what you think is newsworthy. If the newspaper
or radio station agrees, it will help you out.
Study your local press to see what areas most interest the media. If
you live in a military town, consider special events for military families
that the media outlets might cover. If you have an employee with an
unusual story, call the local papers to tip them off, and invite the reporters
to come to your store or business for the interview. When the photographer
shows up, make sure that you or your employee is sitting in front of
a big sign for your business.
If your shop manager just won an award for a short story he wrote, it’s
potentially news. If you’ve invented a new flavor of ice cream, that’s news.
If you’re an accountant who discovered an overlooked tax deduction,
that’s news.
Look around your entire business to find reasons that the public
would like to know about something you or members of your staff have
done. People stories are the bread and butter of local newspapers, radio,
and television.
34. Join This
More than ever, people are joining clubs and associations that reflect
their interests. Your own memberships will serve to involve you in community
events and help you to make real friendships. Clubs and associations
almost always call upon the services of businesses owned by their
members before going outside for these same services.
Encourage your employees to do the same and, if you can, offer to
pay any dues. There are clubs or groups for every possible interest: pets,
gardening, history, alternative health, children’s issues, educational, writing,
music, religion, sports, business, and community. Get involved and
connected, and people will think of you when they need your product
or service.
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35. Team Efforts
Sponsoring sports teams is a time-honored way to get your name in front
of a lot of potential customers. Members of the team you sponsor will frequent
your establishment and recommend it to others. You can sponsor
a team with cash, or you can provide a product or service that the team
needs or a venue for its off-field events.
Organized youth sports are among the fastest-growing activities in the
country. Boys’ lacrosse, for example, is the fastest growing of all youth
sports. If there isn’t a team in your community, try starting one. For every
player on a sponsored team, there are numerous family members who
will learn about your business and become potential customers.
36. The Word on Word of Mouth
When was the last time you saw a mass-market advertising campaign for
Starbucks? How about Paul Newman’s food company? Or the Virgin
Group of companies? What about the restaurant chain Cheesecake Factory,
or Tommy Bahama clothing? These companies don’t emphasize
their advertising. They don’t need it. The fuel that’s made them grow and
prosper is word of mouth, that fabled quality that all truly successful businesses
seem to have.
The best way to get word-of-mouth commitment from your customers
is by opening yours. Talk to your customers, and listen to what they have
to say. When they give you advice, try not to dismiss it out of hand.
Instead, hear it, digest it, and take away everything that makes sense.
Ask your happy, loyal customers for referrals. You may be surprised to
learn that they are glad to oblige. After all, they discovered your great
business, and this gives them a chance to look smart in the eyes of their
friends, relatives, organizational comrades, and business associates. When
they do oblige, make sure to thank them with gusto, both verbally and
in deed. Give them a gift, a discount, something of true value. Reward
good behavior and it will reward you.
Must-Do Business Tactics ✹ 37

In short, build community by making sure that you and your staff are
constantly creating relationships that last.
37. Fly with Flyers
If they are done well, designed well, and distributed properly, flyers and
other handouts announcing special events and promotions are a cheap,
easy way to generate excitement and sales. Remember to maintain your
brand personality, logo, and so on throughout. Use as much color
as you can afford, and hire an expert if you don’t feel confident that
you can produce the best result. In various sections of this book, you’ll
find some tips about different kinds of offers to put on flyers that’ll get
great results.
Make sure you distribute your literature in such a way that it won’t
be considered a nuisance. Depending on your type of business, doorknob
hangers and other literature can be delivered to front doors and tucked
under windshield wipers. Look for special occasions with tie-ins to your
business, such as sporting or entertainment events, and put your flyers
on cars in the parking lot.
But be cautious! Make sure that the high school kid you hired didn’t
either dump them all in the trash or put them where they will annoy people.
A great promotional tactic is only as good as its execution.
38. What’s the Book on You?
General brochures, catalogs, and price lists are where you get to tell your
whole story, talk about your products and services, and project your business’s
personality in an uncluttered environment. It’s where potential customers
can take their time to get to know you. And brochures often get
passed on to other potential customers. People can get these printed
materials directly from you at your place of business or by mail, or they
can pick them up at other locations such as clubs, churches, or chambers
of commerce, and from promotional partners.
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These documents should be professionally produced and should be
as crisp and clear and pleasing to look at as possible. Effective copywriting
and graphic design are specific talents; if you lack them, find someone
who has them.
Imagery is the most powerful tool you have, so choose your pictures
and graphics carefully. You should be able to “read” what the picture
shows from a distance. Muddy, low-contrast, out-of-focus pictures send
exactly the wrong message. Use pictures to help tell your story and convey
the friendliness, excitement, or other mood that you want to project.
Some great choices are smiling people, a view of your place of business,
attractive photos of products, maps, and so on.
This is not the time to skimp. Your brochure should be as inviting as
your storefront, lobby, or other “face” that you show the public. A poorly
produced brochure is not better than none at all.
39. Spread the Good Word
As a businessperson, you are an expert on something, whether it’s the law
or how to install wallpaper. So tell this to the world, or hire a ghostwriter
to help you. Figure out what knowledge you have that the general public
would be most interested in, and write an article about it for your local
newspaper. If you make bagels, write an article about the history of bagels
and how they’re made today versus the old days. If you are a tree trimmer,
write about tree health and care or the varieties of trees that prosper
in your zone. If you cut hair, write about how styles have changed
over the years, or what ever happened to Brylcreem.
Write the article and pitch it to all your local publications, even the
little weeklies and throwaways. If any of them bite, instead of being paid
for your writing, ask to be allowed to mention your business name and
phone number.
Even if no one wants your articles, have them formatted to look as if
they were printed in a newspaper, with justified columns, and print up
some copies to give away to your customers.
Must-Do Business Tactics ✹ 39

40. Winning Is Everything
Contests and sweepstakes are guaranteed excitement builders, if they are
done properly. There are an unlimited number of permutations on this
basic theme and an unlimited number of affordable ways to make the
payoff have real value and increase your sales. You will find many such
promotional tactics in the following pages. You can even buy fortune
cookies with customized messages inside, such as discounts on purchases.
Each customer gets a cookie, breaks it open, and wins whatever discount
the slip says. Consider what a different level of energy is created when
you compare “Ten percent off this week” with “Come in, have a fortune
cookie, and get up to 20 percent off your purchase.” You mix the discounts
to achieve the result you want—a few at 20 percent, some at 15
percent, and a lot at 10 percent. This tactic often encourages people to
buy more because they know that the discount is good only for that day,
so they load up.
Contests call attention to your business, and they also give you an
excuse to collect names and addresses for your customer mailing list.
Always try to fashion these promotions so that people must come to your
business in order to participate.
41. Little House in a Hurry
Booths, kiosks, stands, and the banners and other displays that go along
with them are ways to take your business on the road at very low cost and
high visibility. These inexpensive, portable structures should be kept
ready for use when you need an additional location in a hurry.
Charity events, fairs, sporting events, street festivals, and flea markets
are great places for customers to sample your product, receive a brochure,
and talk to a salesperson. These locations also give you additional opportunities
to sell your products and services. Often a percentage of your
proceeds will go to the event in exchange for allowing you to participate.
Consider it cheap advertising.
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42. Be Cooperative
If you sell products made by others, your vendors often will be happy to
furnish free advertising materials about their products or share the cost
of producing your ad materials. Cooperative ad programs are common.
Look for products you think would benefit from a little help from the
vendor. Look for opportunities to link this promotional tactic with
another, like a special event or a charity drive. Vendors will also often
give free prizes for contests and sweepstakes.
Consider this technique when planning any of your promotions.
43. A Classified Act
An unusual place for many businesses to advertise—but one that is highly
targeted and often successful—is in the classifieds. A great-looking display
ad in the classifieds stands out and is an inexpensive way to
announce special promotions and events.
If your target audience is largely men, try the car ads. Their readership
is primarily male. Try running an ad in the “help wanted” section,
the other most-read classifieds in the paper. Look at the classified listings
in your local papers and see if there are other categories that might appeal
to your customer base.
44. Putting On a Display
Traditional display ads in the main sections of the newspaper are a prime
marketing medium for small businesses, but they are often prohibitively
expensive. Test this kind of marketing cautiously, and be sure to track
your results carefully to see if the return is worth the investment. When
an ad seems to work well, save it and reuse it from time to time. Don’t
change successful ads just for the sake of changing them. One of the
cardinal rules of promotion is to find what works and keep doing it until
it doesn’t.
Must-Do Business Tactics ✹ 41