"Luck is not chance, it's toil. Fortune's expensive smile is earned."

-- Emily Dickinson, poet

by Jami Petersen

Low-cost marketing for small businesses sounds like a dream come true. Lisa Fedele is back to share some ideas for attracting and keeping new customers without breaking the bank. Brochures, emails and incentives are just a few simple tactics that can pay off in a big way. Read more in today's Business SMART article.

Jami Petersen
newsletters@a-z.com

Berkley "Fire & Brimstone"

It's Halloween in New Orleans-and the festivities are going to be killer.

With the help of her best friend Ava, Carmela Bertrand is building a giant monster puppet for the Halloween Monsters & Mayhem parade. Things get terrifying earlier than expected when they overhear an argument between Jekyl Hardy and Brett Fowler- and just minutes later they find Fowler's dead body.

Carmela has known Jekyl for years and can't believe he'd ever resort to murder, despite the fact that Fowler owed him money. But when another victim is discovered - who also had an unfriendly relationship with Jekyl - Carmela is convinced someone is framing her friend and now must find a way to unmask the real killer.

by Lisa Fedele

I In my last article I shared with you how to attract customers to your store by leveraging the investment you have already made. With very little money you can take your current asset and optimize its potential to get you new customers.

Today I review what soft assets you have that you need to leverage at a very low cost to attract new customers. Traditionally we think of marketing as advertising in magazines, on the internet, through flyer distribution, newspaper TV, radio and more. Your most important advertising element is your call to action; done correctly all of these mediums will produce varying degrees of success. These results should be tabulated so you can track what worked for you and learn how to improve your advertising. But sometimes the risk of these advertising campaigns makes you shy away from them; you concern yourself with the initial outlay of cash for results that are not guaranteed, more so in an unhealthy economy. Let’s consider the low cost marketing initiatives that you need to be doing in your store using the assets you already have at your disposal.

Attracting and Keeping New Customers

We are focusing on attracting new customers because I assume you already have a handle on servicing your current customers.

Welcome Letter
New customers need to feel welcomed. You may think their first visit was all it should have been but you should not take this for granted, remember they may just have made the rounds of several stores. I recommend mailing a welcome package by post. The package must include the following or a variation.

• A personalized letter:
- with any some detail about her first “looks like you were interested in our Accucut Machine, I am including a studio coupon so you can use the Accucut free the first time you come-in” or “I hope your first home project was successful, I am including some coupons so you can get more help at the store”.
- Reinforce your weekly (yes it should be weekly) email newsletter full of sales items, promotions and updates on classes and events that they will soon receive if they have provided their email address.
• Coupons:
- for a free studio visit,
- % off a class, and
- A $5.00 welcome gift certificate (yes all three now is the time to get them).
• A brochure or one page flyer:
- that explains who you are (make them feel they know you the owner)
- introduce your staff and instructors,
- hours of service
- Explain what services you offer (studio, events, classes and…) explain in enough detail what each is, how they are run, what customers like about them. You would be surprised that by the time they leave your store 80% of first time visitors do not know you have a studio.
• A current newsletter with times and dates of all classes and events as well as sales and promotions.

This type of communication with new customers will significantly increase your retention rate.

The Handout
You are not the exclusive destination for your customers. They crop at friends houses, other stores, fund raising events, and more. Word of mouth will bring you about 45% of your new customers. The thing with word of mouth is just that it’s not concrete, people forget the details of the information they heard. Be sure you are not lost in the game of word of mouth. Here’s how.

Create a brochure, flyer, or postcard with all the information a new customer would need to find you. I recommend making them wan to find you by including a call to action. Then distribute these in handfuls of 10 to every customer, employee, friend, or other. As you serve a customer at the cash you ask this trick question “do you have any friends” of course the answer is yes, then you grab 10 postcards and ask “can you please share these with your friends, they will love it because there is an incentive (% off, gift certificate etc.) right here, see”. Now what customers do not want to give their friend a “gift”? Everyone wins. Your cost, a little printing and the incentive only costs you if they come so it’s worth it.

Customer List
I am amazed sometimes that some stores do not have a customer list or they have email and not address. It is imperative that you have full information on your customers. Here’s what I recommend you do.

Where have You Been?
• Budget a monthly amount for mailing. You will not mail to your whole list but say your budget is $50 a month you can hit about 50 customers.
• Take your customer list and sort it so that you have all customers who have not visited your store in the last 6 months.
• Decide how far you want to go—customers who have not visited in 12 months? More? Once you have decided this count haw many there are, 500? 2000? You want these customers back in your store.
• Based on your budget decision mail an incentive to these inactive customers until you are current.
• You can expect 20-30% return rate (I did this tactic and those were my results). You will know who these “return” customers are because of the incentive coupon (call to action) they will have. Take the time to do some research, “how have they been, have they been scrapbooking these past months”. This is good to know, we all hate to hear that a customer just doesn’t like us any more, but during this process I built stronger relationships with customers because I was concerned that they were ok.

Bring a Friend
My guess is that most stores already try this tactic with their customer base. Sometimes we feel our customer shave already brought us all their friends and some have but your new customers still need that opportunity.

These have been a few ideas where you can attract new or keep old customers without spending too much money. Marketing is a constant, it should be done all the time, but if you’re risk adverse these days a good strategy is to be sure you are already doing the cost effective tactics, in this case leveraging your soft assets. And that is what being business Smart is all about.

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