Marketing for Small Business – Blog -

Welcome to my blog. I’ve started this because I’ve had a flood of emails from people asking how they can reduce their marketing costs and improve their results now that times are getting tough. Instead of answering people one by one I thought it would be far better to start a two way conversation with a few people at once through a blog, so we all get to hear thoughts and ideas from each other. So please accept the offer and post your reply to any subject we get involved in, if you have a different point of view or some ideas and tips to share with others.

So back to reducing costs and improving results. There are so many answers to this paradigm. So many things that every business can do to reduce costs and improve results.

Step 1 – Get your client info organised

Trouble is, most businesses I’ve worked with over the years are so badly organised when it comes to client information, that implementing new strategies and campaigns only adds to the growth of chaos.

The very first thing which a lot of businesses need to do is spend some time learning (or teaching their admin staff) how to organise your client records in the most efficient way so you can very quickly retrieve information about your current clients, past clients and prospects. You should have a database of contact information – when they first contacted you, their full name, address, phone and email details; what they contacted you about; what they’ve bought; how many times you’ve contacted them and what about; whether they responded; what their needs are; what the results of conversations have been etc.

The database should be in a format where it’s easy to filter this information and can add more fields as you need to. The most basic form is an excel spreadsheet, properly constructed with separate fields for each piece of data. Unfortunately most excel spreadsheets I’ve seen contain first and last names in the one field, some info in a mix of upper and lower case, missing vital info etc. How can you send an email or a direct mail piece with missing info? How can you know which ones to send info to and which ones not to contact?

There are countless database systems available which are fantastic for keeping detailed info and are ideal for sending personalised letters and emails. I hope I never see a Dear Valued Customer letter or email ever again! If I’m so valued, why don’t you know my name? Most of the big companies are guilty of this. Because the databases are set up for accounts people by IT people, who have little desire to collect and update client info, unless it’s to do with invoices.

The worst cases I’ve seen are the most prolific. Small business keeping customer contact info in a Word file, or Outlook. These programs are not designed for personalised contact on a large scale!

So, the bottom line is, if you want to start saving money and getting smarter with your marketing, get your prospect and client info organised first. Only then can you implement some clever marketing strategies to sell more to existing clients and attract more prospects.

Step 2 – Find the Untapped Potential In Your Database
More on this in the next post.

Cheers

Annette Welsford

PS: Check out these simple database programs if you’re still using Word, Excel or Outlook to store your customer contact information – http://www.biztechsoftware.com/

PPS: In our coaching programs we provide step by step videos on how to set up a simple database system using Excel. We also provide links to resources where you can get a Microsoft Access database custom designed for your business, at low cost.