Re-Evaluate Your Marketing Strategy

Is relationship marketing a key element in your marketing strategy? If not, it’s time to re-evaluate on how you spend your marketing budget. Businesses typically spend 80% of their marketing dollars on the pursuit of new customers in an attempt to gain new business, yet this generally does not result in an 80% increase in sales.

Building existing customer relationships and expanding customer retention is an important strategic aspect to consider. A new and growing business needs to constantly capture new consumers to grow its customer base, but it’s also important not to lose sight of your existing customers, even if they purchased from you only one time.

Why Does a Customer Defect?

There are several reasons why customers may decide to leave you and go to a competitor, but the ones heard most often are:

• They felt your pricing was too high or unfair
• They had an unresolved complaint
• They took a competitors offer
• They left because they felt you didn't care

The last two reasons in this list make up the majority of lost customers, which can be a difficult realization, but one that can be turned around. Business by nature is competitive. You may not always be able to meet or beat the prices of larger companies who can purchase in larger quantities, but you can prevent a customer from defecting because they feel unimportant.

How to Retain your Customer Base

There are several ways to achieve the goal of retaining your customers and making them feel their business matters. The main focus here is building those relationships and finding ways to connect with your customers. Learn about their needs and what they’re looking for when they make an online purchase. Determine how to meet those needs and let your customers know that you value them.

In a seemingly endless world of online business, it is easy for a customer to feel like a number and that he does not matter. Nothing could be further from the truth, and you need to make sure your customer knows this. If one feels ignored and switches to a competitor, not only do you lose their business, but you also risk the potential of unhappy word-of-mouth discussions.

Customers often feel an affinity for the "little guy" in business, the "underdog" so to speak. People routinely pay more for the same item at a mom & pop store than at a big conglomerate. This happens for a variety of reasons, but primarily because of the relationship they build with the owners. For the customer this relationship creates a feeling that they matter, and that the owners are happy to see them when they walk through the door.

The same holds true in Internet marketing. It is a slightly more complicated avenue, but the sentiment remains the same. People like to feel noticed, and that their business is important. If you can create relationships with your customers that make them feel this way, you are well on the road to customer retention and a solid customer base.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing
firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by
creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.
Join his JV Wealth e-zine at http://www.christianfea.com/joint-venture-wealth-report/?a=2

Collaboration Marketing for Your Business

Developing a strategic marketing plan is crucial in raising awareness for your business. If consumers don't know about your company, it’s very difficult for them to buy from you. The art of successful marketing is largely about letting the public know how and where to find you.

For online business, there are a variety of creative ways to do this: direct email, banner ads and pop-up ads all of which are very successful tools. However, a rather new concept to online business is the collaboration marketing strategy, of which, an understanding will help you develop a complete marketing campaign.

What is Collaboration Marketing?

In essence, collaboration marketing focuses directly on attracting customers to your site, rather than intercepting them with traditional advertising methods. In traditional advertising, customers are somewhat randomly drawn to your business. For instance, if they happen to see an enticing advertisement and click on it, they may find their way to your website. This is a proven and effective marketing tool, but to truly find an edge in a sea of online businesses, it’s important to cultivate new and creative ways to raise awareness for your business.

How Does Collaboration Marketing Work?

Collaboration marketing attracts new business by becoming helpful to the customer, in a sense a sort of personalized service. This type of marketing targets customers in terms of evaluating potential new products and services that may be of interest to them and working with them to get more value from products and services they may have already purchased.

This might sound like a lot of work, but these goals can be obtained through a straightforward process that will target a large group of customers at one time. Personalized service need not be personal service. Collaboration marketing challenges the idea of the "one on one" personalized service with the refreshing view of multiple "one on one" consumer services occurring simultaneously.

Push vs. Pull

Collaboration marketing works by mobilizing a broad range of relevant third party marketers to add value to the customer relationship. These marketers make resources and relationships available to the customer that will enhance the products the customer has already purchased, thus creating a need and loyalty to the company of previous purchases. This is a pull approach where the marketer becomes useful to the customer so the buyer then seeks out the marketer, rather than traditional types of marketing that seek to push a customer towards their product by invading emails and blasting out ads.

Certainly, traditional modes of marketing are effective. Many types have been successfully implemented for decades. But the art of any successful marketing campaign is about finding an edge and developing a strategy that will get you noticed and attract customers to the products and services that you offer. Collaboration marketing should not be the only marketing strategy you implement, but rather, another piece of your repertoire to give you an edge to get your business noticed and help make your company a success.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing
firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by
creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.
Join his JV Wealth e-zine at http://www.christianfea.com/joint-venture-wealth-report/?a=2

Are You Using The Power of Unselfish Self Promotion?

selling yourself

Every week I read at least 20 blogs that have the word "Shameless Self Promotion" in them when the writers mention themselves or products.It is really strange to see how many people out there use those words.  I get blog posts daily related to self promotion and the majority of them are start with the words "a bit of Shameless Self Promotion". 

You might think that the title "Shameless Self Promotion" appears once in a while here and there on a blog or a website. The majority of blogs or internet posts use the word "Shameless", WOW.  This inspired me to write a self help or self improvement book on how to market and self yourself.

Do you think people don't like selling themselves?  Do you think people will recent you or block you in some mental or unconscious way? I don't get it! What is happening?  For starters, most of these internet entries come from people that have great content on their websites and blogs, so promote it, otherwise people will never find out and benefit from that content.

Maybe I can change your mind on what Self Promotion is and why it is never shameless.  You see, self promotion is an impulse that started with survival, with a primal instinct of self preservation.  Soon after it turned into a social skill that also required helping others to survive and strive in society in order to have more people helping each other and, yes, helping you.Self preservation started it all and now we have self promotion.  

Now, you also have to remember that if you have a good product or a good service and people will benefit from it there is no shame in promoting it.  After all, you are providing a solution.  This is the most important point of this article.  –If you provide value you need to promote it- This value can be with a product or service and it can also be form your advice, expertise, stories or blog posts.This new strategy or way of living is now part of a book "The Unselfish Guide to Self Promotion". 

Unselfish Self Promotion means that you provide value first. You always provide some kind of "worth" to sociaty or readers or strangers.  You provide it in content, products, advice and friendship.  When you do this you are promoting yourself whether you want it or not.

 

Jorge S.Olson is a Professional Motivational Keynore Speaker & Author. Jorge is an eternal teenager, author and keynote speaker. His latest self-help book "The Unselfish Guide to Self Promotion" will teach you how to sell yourself and your ideas all by helping others and making a difference in the world.  You can find his latest book 'The Unselfish Guide to Self Promotion" on http://www.UnselfishPromotion.com

Commercial coffee machines- essential for every big enterprise

There are numerous beverages taken by abundant people all across the world of which coffee is the one of the chiefly consumed beverages. Most of us drink coffee every day in the morning when on our path to work, during work as a refresher and with our close friends in the assemblies. Well, to adore a cup of coffee you don’t actually need a reason . We just enjoy its strong essence and thus can relish a cup of coffee at any given time of the day.
Today, any place you go, you can get yourself a cup of coffee due to the presence of the several commercial coffee machines that are put in in the several places. The coffee making machines are accessible in diverse brands, quality and ability dependent on the want of the customers. There are abundant kinds of coffee machines of which the commercial coffee machines are amid the highly used types used classes. These commercial coffee making machines have a better ability in comparison to the habitual home based coffee making machines and thus can make various cups of coffee in just one round. Thus, based on the need of the commercial venture, a commercial coffee machine of a precise range or capacity and design should be chosen.
Today, there are numerous business areas such as the business structures, restaurants, shops or any type of marketable enterprise at the diverse places which installed these commercial coffee machines for the reason of refreshment of their regulars or employees. A cup of coffee is just the break that most of the staff look ahead for, after the extended functioning hours in the marketable enterprise. amid all the beverages, coffee is considered as one of the finest refreshing beverages that is consumed by nearly all of the employees and customers. Thus, the commercial coffee machines are used broadly in these commercial endeavor all through the year for the improved service and refreshment of their staff. The commercial coffee machines appear to be reasonable in comparison to the diverse other available beverages and the traditional coffee machines due to their large capability. Hence they save a lot of money for the endeavor and also at the same point facilitate in giving good service to its employees and clients.
Hence, the commercial coffee machines play a very critical role in maintaining not only the usual work of all its recruits, but also of the total venture. Hence, it indirectly plays a imperative role in the growth of an endeavor.