In the last Success Marketing Strategy we talked about pricing and how most business people under price their products and services. Of course, fixing this problem is a huge source of profit improvement.
A second source of profit improvement directly linked to everything else we've discussed in these email is doing more business with each customer as opposed to obtaining lots of new customers. A lesson I've learned from the mail order business is that a buyer is a buyer is a buyer. It's infinitely easier and always more profitable to work at increasing the purchasing of your satisfied customers than it is to go out and add new ones.
Everybody should read Russell Conwell's great book 'Acres of Diamonds,' at least once a month. This great story hammers home the point of finding opportunities right in your own back yard.
Then the third source of profit improvement is cost control. It's so darned easy for costs to sneak up on you when you're not looking. I'm constantly catching some cost factor in my own businesses that has side stepped its controls and needs to be reevaluated.
If you have the clout a good policy to insist on and to contractedly commit all your vendors to is advanced written notice of any price increases. You should also take the time to check new bills against previous bills on a regular basis. Also a set percentage of gross sales should be established for each cost category in your business. For payroll, supplies, etc. and checked each month. If total cost exceeds the set percentage you've got a problem.
I also like to find ways for businesses to make additional sales to existent customers with zero marketing costs. In the mail order business this is quite easy to do. It's done with what's done with a bounce back offer. That is a brochure making another offer packed in with the shipment of the ordered merchandise.
This way the sales literature piggy backs its way to the customer with the shipment, there's no postage, no advertising costs. Many mail order companies have developed very sophisticated, comprehensive bounce back marketing programs including the insertion of dozens of different offers in with each outbound shipment.
If you don't ship merchandise but you do send monthly statements or send out invoices the same idea applies. Or for the retail store sales literature can be dropped into each bag carried out of the store by the customer. In a service business the literature could be hand delivered by the service provider.
If you transact business online...you should certainly offer additional products on your thank you pages. In some way, shape or form it makes good economic sense to combine the necessity of delivering the product or service with advertising for the next sale.
Dan Kennedy, http://www.dankennedy.com/
Is Web 2.0 A Bubble?
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Magnolia
NewsVine
Furl
Google
Yahoo