Here are some low-cost marketing gems. Winning customers and keeping them is the number one strategy for businesses determined to have an impressive and long track record — but there are some important lessons we all must learn or remember.

You really can reduce business down to core foundation stones or pearls of wisdom. Sure, success requires a bit more, however, if your key building blocks that hold up your business are sound, it’s a great start.

Andrew Griffiths wrote the well-received books 101 Ways to Market Your Business and 101 Survival Tips For Your Business.
Griffiths advises small business owners that there are 11 survival steps for smart advertising marketing:

1. Develop your marketing philosophy
You might be a quality repairer, a fast worker or a money-back guarantee operation or whatever — but let the market know, as this builds business

2. Do a course or read a book
Marketing your business is vital to your success and so getting educated is simply good sense

3. Take small steps to market your business
Don’t bust the bank. Set out a simple plan and build up your marketing exposure gradually

4. Develop a strong corporate image
This is about ‘advertising’ a professional image. It could mean uniforms, quality signage, polished cars, groovy offices, a professional website, trained staff and being super customer-focused

5. Don’t be pressured into advertising
Make sure it is right for you at the right time. Make sure it really will suit your business and that it will work

6. Market your business to a simple plan
Have objectives: describe your customers, your products, list your marketing strategies, work out a budget and a time frame, allocate responsibilities, establish review dates and list ways to monitor customer satisfaction

7. Don’t lose touch with your customers
Griffiths recommends that we don’t make the mistakes of many big businesses which implement cost-saving processes to the annoyance of their customers

8. Don’t stop marketing just because it’s booming
Just as it’s logical that you’d be restricted in your outlays in tough times, in boom times you have the money to build your brand

9. If you have no time to market, find someone who does
There are no excuses for not marketing. If you can’t do it, pay someone to do it for you

10. Talk to others
Network and build up strategic alliances — they not only do ads for you when they talk about you, they’re also customers. Go for this during tough times

11. Find a business you admire
Many successful franchises have simply copied McDonald’s as best they could. If there’s a small business you admire, try to learn from it.
Also, let me remind you of the market research work of Michael Le Boeuff, who wrote How to Win and Keep Customers (Information Australia 1987). He came up with numbers we all should never forget.

“A typical business hears from only 4% of its dissatisfied clients. The other 96% just quietly go away and 91% never come back. Many customers are conflict avoiders and walk away from your business and talk badly about you if you rough them up.”

And there’s more bad news from Le Boeuff.

“A typical unhappy customer tells eight to 10 people about their problem. One in five will tell 20!”

What do I do when customers complain?
The best thing you can do is to listen to complaints so you can really improve your business.

Paul Cave, the guy who dreamed up the idea of BridgeClimb over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, reckons when all his systems were in place and he had others running the day-to-day operations, he gave himself the job of reading complaints on the evaluation forms his customers’ filled out.

Cave was excited that over 90% of customers filled out the forms but he complained he didn’t get enough complaints!
Of course it was tongue-in-cheek but he made the point that he couldn’t keep improving his business without customer feedback and recommendations.

Being a customer service expert and regularly surveying your customers is a fantastic, fundamental building block of absolutely fabulous businesses.

By Peter Switzer, published on 18/11/2008

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