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-1- Published by: Marketing Best Practices, Inc. Author: H. David Frey 2507 W. Bay Area Blvd. Suite 1534 Webster, Texas 77598 Email: David@MarketingBestPractices.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. Disclaimer This manual is designed to provide information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher and authors and advisers are not rendering legal, accounting or other professional services. It is not the purpose of this manual to reprint all the information that is otherwise available to authors, printers and publisher but to complement, amplify and supplement other texts. For more information, see the references throughout the text. Every effort has been made to make this manual as complete and as accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes both typographical and in content. Therefore, this text should be used only as a general guide and not as the ultimate source of publishing information. Furthermore, this manual contains information only up to the printing date. The authors, advisers and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this manual. Copyright © 2003 by H. David Frey, Marketing Best Practices Inc. First Edition. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 1-931740-57-7 -2- TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Chapter 1 — Your Seven-Step One-Day Marketing Plan 11 Chapter 2 — The Lifetime Value of Your Customer 17 Chapter 3 — Differentiate or Die: Your Unique Selling Proposition 20 Chapter 4 — The Five-Step Formula To Creating Your Marketing Message 24 Chapter 5 — How to Make it Rain Referrals 29 Chapter 6 — Tapping Into Your Most Valuable Small Business Asset...Your Current Customers 39 Chapter 7 — Joint Ventures: Using Other People’s Customers to Get New Business 47 Chapter 8 — What Business Are You In? 54 Chapter 9 — How Free Giveaways Can Boost Your Small Business Revenues 58 Chapter 10 — Guarantee Marketing: How to Turn Your Guarantee Into A Competitive Weapon 63 Chapter 11 — Niche Marketing: Expand Your Customer Base By Narrowing Your Marketing Focus 74 Chapter 12 — Using Consumer Research To Develop Powerful Small Business Marketing Strategies 92 Chapter 13 — 13 Elements Of A Winning Small Business Advertisement 97 Chapter 14 — 12-Step Foolproof Sales Letter Template 103 Chapter 15 — Telephone Success Strategies for Small Businesses 112 Chapter 16 — How to Price Your Product or Service for Maximum Profit 117 Chapter 17 — How To Use the Power of Packaging to Double Your Sales 132 Chapter 18 — Membership Marketing: Turning Occasional Buyers Into Loyal Customers 139 Chapter 19 — Street Marketing for Small Businesses 145 Chapter 20 — Using Customer Testimonials in Your Marketing Message to Break Down Fear and Skepticism Chapter 21 — The Key To Guaranteed Repeat Sales Chapter 22 — Lead Generation: How to Flood Your Small Business With -3- 151 158 Hot Qualified Prospects 165 Chapter 23 — Charity Marketing: Growing Your Business Through Charitable Giving 172 Chapter 24 — Bumps, Up-sells, Cross-sells, and Down-sells 177 Chapter 25 — How to Create an Offer that Your Prospects Can’t Resist 183 Chapter 26 — How to Radically Reduce Refunds and Returns 194 Chapter 27 — Internet Marketing Strategies for Local Small Businesses 201 Chapter 28 — 16 Small Business Website Mistakes (and how to fix them) 205 Chapter 29 — How to Start Your Own Online Newsletter 229 Chapter 30 — Measure Your Marketing Efforts 251 Special Report # 1 — How to Make Yellow Pages Ads Work for Your Small Business! 255 Special Report # 2 — Secrets to Direct Mail Success for Small Businesses 272 Special Report # 3 — How to Get Free Publicity for Your Small Business 297 -4- Please Accept My Personal Invitation to Subscribe to… To Get Your FREE Lifetime Subscription Simply Visit www.MarketingBestPractices.com or Send a Blank Email to Subscribe@MarketingBestPractices. -5- Introduction The small business world is evolving. Competition, the emergence of the Internet, and mergers and acquisitions (not to mention the recession) have forced small businesses to rethink their marketing strategies. Competition Is For Real… Are You Ready? With the recession, small businesses are finding it harder and harder to compete. Many small business owners are asking themselves, “How do I ‘recession-proof” my business?” The answer is: Make marketing your first priority! Is customer service important? Absolutely. Are keeping your finances important? Absolutely. Is developing your employee important? Absolutely. All those processes are very important, but during a recession NONE are more important than your marketing efforts. Marketing is what drives your business. During a recession, it will mean the difference between going out of business or weathering the storm and being a super success. Your best business years could be during this recession! It’s during the difficult times that you learn how to stretch your marketing dollar, to make the most of your marketing investment. It’s during times like these that you learn new and innovative marketing techniques that help your business thrive. In “The Small Business Marketing Bible,” you will learn new and different techniques to market your business that will make it immune to economic fluctuations and will increase your top and bottom line no matter what the economy is doing. You Must Hunt Down and Capture Your Prospects I truly believe there will be fewer and fewer consumers that are out there just waiting to buy. You will need to learn how to search out those prospects that may want to buy and convince them that they need to buy — today. To do this you will need to discover new and different ways to do prospecting and marketing. Flashing ads with the words “sale, sale, sale” all over them won’t work. All these types of ads do is skim the cream-of-the-crop prospects. (i.e. Those prospects who are ready to buy today.) However, during the recession you will have to employ stealth marketing techniques that will quietly hunt down and capture those prospects who are secretly waiting to buy, but are too concerned about other things to make a move. The only way to survive and thrive during competitive times is to re-focus your attention on marketing. It’s time to tune up your marketing — to make sure you’re getting new -6- customers in, inactive customers coming back, and your active customers purchasing more. It’s Time to Re-Double Your Marketing Efforts and Make Them Your First Priority Now is not the time to pull back on your marketing efforts but to re-double your efforts and your commitment to be the smartest and savviest marketer in the your industry. I honestly believe that marketing is what drives successful businesses. Good marketing can overcome a multitude of business sins. They don’t excuse the business sins but they can make up for them. I have spent many years consulting in different areas of business, in both Fortune 500 companies and in small businesses. I’ve “reengineered” finance departments, logistics and supply chain systems, human resources functions, and even product development areas. As successful as those consulting engagements were, none had as much impact on the business then when I helped companies re-focus their efforts on marketing. This is exactly why I left the world of big company consulting and turned my attention to helping small businesses thrive using common sense marketing techniques. Establish Effective Marketing Systems and Put Your Small Business On Autopilot A few of the marketing techniques I introduce to you in this manual will be completely new and somewhat unusual. But they work. They are proven. You may already be practicing some of these techniques but haven’t figured out how to fully implement them so that they become a “system.” I like “systems.” Systems are reliable and predictable. You can “turn on” an effective system and know what the results will be the next day. If they are done right they allow you to put your marketing efforts on autopilot and move on to implementing the next marketing strategy. Effective marketing systems also allow you to leverage the assets that you already have. These assets can very well be the knowledge that you have stored in your brain but aren’t taking advantage of because you don’t know how. You will understand this more when you read the sections on “Education-Based Marketing” or “Guaranteed Marketing.” Putting these marketing techniques to work for you will put you head and shoulders above your competitors. Why? Because very few (if any) small business owners know the dynamic marketing techniques I’m about to show you — ideas that can literally double your current business within six months and have customers practically line up and beg to buy from you. -7- Four Growth Areas — The Key To Your Ultimate Marketing Plan The secret lies in learning how to grow your business effectively. There are several strategies you can use to grow your business, but they all fall under four general categories. 1. Attract more new customers. 2. Increase the average sales amount. 3. Make your customers buy from you more often. 4. Hold on to your customers for life. Every technique that I will talk about in this manual will fall under one or more of these growth categories. I believe small businesses focus too much of their efforts on number 1 and number 4. You may disagree with me, but if a small business is receiving 40% of its new business from referrals, it may be an indication that they are not spending enough time on attracting new customers from the marketplace. Don’t get me wrong. Referrals are the best kind of customers. But if you spend the majority of your time and money trying to get them you may be neglecting a whole slew of new customers that are waiting to buy from you. In the same vein, if a small business spends all its time marketing to new customers and ignoring existing customers, you may be missing out on a lot of low-hanging fruit. As I mentioned, there are many ways to leverage your marketing efforts in these four categories. Here are just a few ways to improve each of your areas of growth: Attract more new customers… • Select a niche market that you can easily contact and dominate it. • Develop an Education-Based Marketing program that compels your prospects to contact you to learn more about how you can help them. • Establish a proactive referral program with centers of influence that can open new channels of growth for you and your business. Increase the average sales amount… • Up-sell your customers to high quality products and services. -8- • Suggest accessories and add-on items and services that compliment your customer’s purchase. • Combine several items into a package that would cost less if sold separately. Make your customers buy from you more often… • Establish ongoing communications that present compelling offers that can’t be turned down. • Follow up with your customers to see how they’re enjoying the benefits of the new product or service you sold them, and suggest products or services that would increase their satisfaction. • Track your customer’s usage and buying patterns to suggest purchases right before they actually need them (this also helps keep the competition away). Hold on to your customers for life… • Deliver uncommon customer service by going the extra mile. • Give your customers the opportunity to “go on record” by giving you testimonials about your great customer service. • Perform stealth surveys with your customers from time to time to gauge their level of satisfaction. Your goal is to design systems and programs that surround these four categories of growth strategies. In this manual I will give you specific marketing techniques for each of these areas to grow your small business. After reading and studying this manual you will have the weapons you need to create the ultimate small business marketing plan that will help you flourish during any down economy. You May Have to Completely Re-Think Your Marketing Strategy As you read, think about how each strategy or method could be applied to your small business. Throw away your ego and ponder how you can customize these powerful tactics to fit into your current business model. While you’re reading this manual, have a notepad handy to take notes and write down To-Do’s. Perhaps you will have to step back and take a whole new look at how you’re marketing today. After reading this manual you may want to re-evaluate your entire marketing plan. Some of these ideas may be so new to you that it will compel you to re-examine your goto-market strategy. -9- Don’t believe for one second that many of these techniques are obvious to everyone — they’re not. Only a very few know and understand them. As one of those few, you’ll not only learn how to make your small business stay alive and thrive, but you’ll learn how to dominate your marketplace. That’s what you want isn’t it? Then dive right into “The Small Business Marketing Bible.” Sincerely, David Frey CEO, Marketing Best Practices, Inc. Author, “The Small Business Marketing Bible” - 10 -