Posts Tagged ‘Small Business Marketing’

Cross Promote by Partnering with Local Businesses

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Are you constantly looking for new ways to build awareness around your business, your products, or your services? If so, congrats! Small businesses in today’s economy should always be pressing forward in trying to find creative ways to get their name out there.

Is your business located in a small town? How about a big city? Either way, I’d imagine that the majority of readers who own and operate a small business have it located in an area close to other businesses. With that said, have you ever considered approaching any other local business owners to see if they’d be interested in doing a cross promotion with you and your small business?

Cross promotion involves two or more parties who setup a program where each party helps promote the others’ products & services. I had the idea the other day when I was meeting Steve Keib, owner of Tranquility Life Spa & Salon, for lunch at Spatola’s Pizza in Lansdale, PA. He and I were discussing creative ways to market his business when the idea hit me. Steve should have a flier on each table at Spatola’s. In exchange for space at the tables, Steve could offer to put coupons & a menu for Spatola’s at his cash register – persuading each and every customer to take one with them as they pay for their Spa services.

How much do you think a promotion like this costs? If you said almost $0 then you’d be right. It takes a creative idea, a little time and networking, some printing costs and that’s it. You now get access to all of Spatola’s customers and vice versa. Each small business owner is happy and hopefully traffic increases. Definitely be sure that you setup some measurement tools, such as adding a unique code to each coupon you put in someone’s store OR by having your flier say “mention that you saw our flier at Spatola’s and receive 10% off”. For each customer who mentions it, be sure to track that sale in your computer/register so that you can go back to see just how well the promotion is working.

The best part about this idea is that you don’t have to limit your partnership to one other business. You can work with many different businesses in your local area. Just be sure the customers who come into your partner’s store are the same target customer who you want to attract.

Is anyone currently running a cross promotion strategy like this? If so, how’s it working for your small business?

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Posted in Small Business | 3 Comments »

Restaurant Owners, What’s on Your Social Media Menu?

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

A few weeks back I was having dinner at one of my favorite local restaurants, Spatola’s Pizza in Lansdale, PA. It’s really a hidden gem as Spatola’s has great food for unbelievable prices. Being that it’s right around the corner from my place, I’m there quite a bit. For some reason, during this trip I noticed their specials menu that sits on every table. Check out the image below (taken with my iPhone – the quality isn’t the greatest).

Sitting there reading the daily specials made something click in my mind. Why don’t restaurants offer a Social Media Menu? Each table can have a similar menu setup, but instead of sharing the daily specials, or in addition to sharing those specials, also use the opportunity to let your customers know what social networks you frequent. People always ask how they can get more traffic to their social media sites, well ideas like this are how you do it.

If you’re on YouTube and Ning, then let your customers know that. Provide your URLs on your social media menu. Then offer a few promotions to entice your customers to sign up for your social sites. These days the majority of your customers are going to have smart phones, which means they can access the Internet right from the table. A few examples could be:

  • Use the video recorder on your phone to shoot a quick video of you in our restaurant – post it to our Ning for a free appetizer
  • Sign onto YouTube and add us as your friend to receive 10% off your bill tonight
  • Promote our Ning network on your Twitter or Facebook page to receive a free dessert

Check out the example Social Media Menu below. How long do you think it would take you to create this, print out a few copies, and place one on every table in your restaurant? Probably an hour, if not less. Costs? Close to zero.

So, all of you restaurant owners out there I ask you this, what’s on your Social Media Menu?

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Posted in Small Business | 8 Comments »

Attention Small Business Owners, Customer Service is Crucial

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Sometimes in the rush to build a great company that offers remarkable products and services, business owners forget one critical element of all great organizations, Customer Service. Having an outstanding Customer Service department could be the difference between keeping customers and losing customers or between having one-time customers and loyal followers.

Creating a Customer Service policy is a great first step. It can be situation-based. Write down all of the possible situations you can think of where customers will need the help of your Customer Service team. Then figure out the best possible way to solve each situation. Be sure to coach your employees on this. With this being said, I think it’s absolutely critical that you empower your employees by allowing them to stray from the policy when they feel it’s appropriate.

The overall message should be, “keep our customers happy”. If a customer comes to one of your employees with an issue, but doesn’t like your policy for handling their issue, then allow your employee to improvise however they see fit, as long as it’s going to keep that customer happy and not impact other customers or your business too much. By keeping your customers happy at all costs, you’ll turn frustrated customers into loyal followers. Those individuals are invaluable as they will tell many members of their network about how great your company is because you successfully solved their issue.

As your business grows, so too will customer service issues. Make sure your policy is fluid and constantly updated. Check-in with you employees quarterly or monthly to see if there were any unusual customer service issues that they were able to solve. Based on the feedback, update your policy accordingly in case that same, or a similar, issue comes up in the future.

Have you had any Customer Service mishaps with any businesses that have left you feeling either more loyal to that business OR totally turned off by it? Please share your feedback with our readers so that they can see just what types of issues arise and how they were handled. I think those real world scenarios will help all of us when drafting our Customer Service Policy.

Happy New Year!

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Posted in Small Business | 16 Comments »