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AS SEEN IN
I hear from small business owners who say they’ve tried direct marketing and it doesn’t work. That may be true in your case, but I have an idea why it didn’t work. It’s not the medium as this medium works very well when used correctly. Instead, the execution is likely to blame for your failed campaign. Here are the most common reasons I see why direct marketing doesn’t work for small business owners and how to improve your return on investment.
1) It’s canned.
As a kid I was involved in competitive sports. I realized pretty early on that to achieve what I definied as success, I needed to be specific in my goals.
Erin and I are at WPPI in Las Vegas for the next few days motivating, inspiring and teaching small business owners to succeed in business. My platform today is from 8-10 am and I am teaching how to increase your sales so you can do what you love. Research has shown that businesses that succeed have higher sales and those that fail, often it is due to low sales. If you can’t make it, here is a bit from my program.
Whether you’re a new business owner or have been in business for years, it’s probably in your nature to want to please everyone. I’ve written about how saying no can save your business in depth in previous posts. Sometimes customers may come to you for a related product or service that you don’t offer and that is not what you do best. And being the person you are, you want to help them. And at the end of the day, you need revenue to pay the bills, too.
You may already own your own business. Or you may be trapped in a full time job you want to leave and dream of owning your own business. The Entrepreneur Equation, just released by author Carol Roth, helps ‘wanna be’ entrepreneurs and those who are looking to take their business to the next level ask the first necessary question: not “Could I?” but rather “Should I?” start my own business.
I’m a cereal eater. Every morning, like clockwork, I have a bowl and sometimes as a snack before bed. I don’t have five varieties in my pantry, rather just my one stand by. I’m a packaged goods company’s dream customer; loyal to one type of cereal, a heavy-consumer, likely in their top 20% of all customers.
Three weeks ago when I entered my local grocery store (a small chain), my cereal had been replaced. It was missing from the aisle.
As many of you know, I am a business book junkie. I am not sure how I have missed this book, Hug Your Customers, but it is now officially one of my favorites (which basically means that I have already started gifting this book).
There’s a lot of hype about vision boards and the practice of visioning. From the best-selling book, The Secret, to a recent Inc. Magazine article by Ari Weinzweig on the topic, picturing what you see success looking like in the future and then committing it to paper or some other media helps many people stay focused. Rather than mapping out a strategy for how to get ‘there’, the vision simply defines what ‘there’ looks like.
This weekend my husband and I braved the Dallas ice and snow to grab dinner at one of my favorite restaurants. When we walked in, we were asked if we had a chance to call ahead to save a table. We had not made a reservation, but I was taken aback so I wanted to share this easy marketing idea with you.
$10K in a Weekend is Something YOU CAN DO with one KILLER photography mini-session promotion. By launching a photography mini-session promotion that is designed to create a lot of buzz, you can bring in a surge of money in a short amount of time. Here's what that...
How do you find clients who are willing to actually pay for photography, when so many people are giving it away or selling digital files for cheap? That's the subject of this case study where I show you one of my favorite ideas that is completely free marketing for...
Looking For Some Of The Best Photography Marketing Ideas To Grow Your Business This Year? Maybe you've been toying with the idea of taking your photography business to the next level and getting more serious. Or maybe you've just exhausted all your best ideas. Either...
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