From the category archives:

Marketing

Coupons, e-Coupons and More

by Karen Wylie

in Marketing, Rural Small Business, Seasonal Business

coupons e-coupons ruralEverybody likes to save money, and in today’s economy that’s more true for your customers than ever before. Coupons don’t have to mean you make less money. In fact, you can offer coupons on specific products that aren’t selling and you need to move, or offer them during slower seasons of the year.

Coupons can also be used to show customers how much you value them and their continuing business with you. You can reward them for their loyalty or for the dollar value of their purchases.

If coupons are offered online, most shopping carts can be easily programmed to accept coupon codes. However, coupons can be redeemed in-store, on phone or mail orders too.

You can use coupons to direct customers to particular items or ways of ordering that you believe will reinforce their relationship with you. For example, when we do trade shows we offer customers 15-25% off coupons if they follow up by placing an order on our website. Customers who visit our store for the first time while traveling as tourists to our region are also given coupons to place orders on our website when they get home.

Here are a few coupon reward strategies and types of coupons to consider:

Reward Frequent Customers

You can reward customers for their loyalty by providing coupons when they buy a particular dollar amount, or include specific items in their purchase. Customers appreciate being recognized and rewarded for their loyalty to you! This coupon can be provided online or in person.

Reel In Repeat Customers

Give your customers a reason to come back after making a purchase for the first time. If they buy in person, give them a coupon to purchase from your website. If a customer orders online first, you can provide coupons for ordering online when they return.

Online coupons that a customer can print off and bring with them also gives you feedback about how your website is being used. Coupons can also be emailed after a customer makes a purchase, or sent via snail mail if you have their mailing address.

First Time Customers

First time customers who need a little extra reason to take the risk and ‘try’ a new product or supplier can often be persuaded by a coupon specifically for first time customers.

Loyal Newsletter Subscribers

Customers can be rewarded for their loyalty when you put coupons in newsletters, because odds are customers who receive your newsletter have either purchased from you before or asked to hear from you in the future. Targeting and rewarding these loyal customers can only increase your sales.

Cross Sell Related or Popular Products

You know your products and you know what your customers like. Once they buy one product, you probably know which additional products they are more likely to need or want. You can provide coupons toward the purchase of those related items.

Get Buyers Off the Fence

You may not be able to watch your potential customers when they peruse your website, but offering percentage off coupons or free shipping opportunities are certainly ways to persuade a shopper to go ahead and checkout with their purchase, rather than wandering off to another site.

Do you believe in coupons? What coupon or combination of coupons works best for you? What coupons will persuade you to buy from a business?

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What Is The Future of Business Cards?

by Karen Wylie

in Marketing, Rural Small Business

business cards for rural businessWhat is the future of business cards?

I was looking at various items I need to reprint this Spring, and my business card is one of them.

I’m always amazed at print prices and how they continue to come down from years past, even just from last Fall. That’s definitely not a complaint. The color and stylistic options seem to expand all the time.

But in thinking about business cards, I was wondering if they are still used as much as they used to be, or in the same ways.

I find I usually use a business card for a short time, using it to check out someone’s website (assuming their website address is on their card), email a message to follow-up on meeting them, or to call and set up a meeting.

Some of my friends enter business card information immediately into their Blackberries or IPhones, or meticulously file the cards in their Rolodex.

I have one graphic designer friend who has a business card with only his website address on it. He prefers to use his website as his business card, with all contact information easily accessible online, but not on the card.

Another created an animated video for her website that displayed the information usually presented on a business card. That was great until she moved, and the video was no longer current and had to be re-shot and edited. It’s still not back online. The video was too complicated to be updated easily, like a printed business card could have been.

So I’m back with the same question I started with. I’m wondering how people are using and storing business cards they receive, or how they are sharing them.

They have always been so fundamental to networking and sharing information.

What do you think the future of business cards is FOR YOU in your rural business? How will you use them?

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Telling Your Own Business Stories

by Karen Wylie

in Marketing, Rural Small Business

marketing your small business storyWhether you’re speaking to customers, your employees or the local Rotary Club, odds are you’ve got stories to tell. Not tall tales, untrue and uninteresting. But stories that can inspire, influence, motivate and even turn negative situations around.

Stories are often more memorable and more effective than just facts or directives. What are some of the things we remember most from our own childhood? STORIES. How or why you started your business is far more interesting to hear about when you tell it as a story, rather than simply reciting your resume. Visitors to a rural small business are often interested in the whole rural experience, and what it’s like to create and run a small business in rural America. Stories are the perfect way to share this information and entertain at the same time.

In her book ‘Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins’, Annette Simmons describes six different type stories that work in the workplace: stories that tell who you are, why your business exists, that reinforce a learning point, inspire hope, share values or state your understanding of another’s perspective (like your customer’s perspective).

In Business Story Telling - Using Stories To Inspire, the Mindtools website shares several tips from Ms. Simmons that a business owner should keep in mind when telling stories:

* Be authentic - The best storytellers talk from their hearts, so don’t try to fake an emotion that you don’t feel. Your listeners will probably see through this, and your story will crash and burn.

* Pay attention to your audience - Stories that are too long are generally boring. Tell the story well, but don’t go on forever.

* Practice - Try to practice before you tell the story. Even if you tell it to yourself just once in front of a mirror or video camera, this can help you when you’re in front of your real audience.

* Create an experience - Remember that when you tell a story, you’re creating an experience for your listeners. Don’t just use sound (words), but the other senses as well. Show your listeners the picture you’re painting, don’t just tell them.

What are some stories you can tell about your own business?

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Collaborative Marketing with Artistic Flair

by Karen Wylie

in Art & Crafts, Marketing

marshas-view12The artwork pictured here to the left is ‘Marsha’s View,’ an original pastel painting by artist Kay Gordon of Marshall, North Carolina.

In recent weeks I’ve featured collaborative marketing partnerships among those in crafts.

In Collaborative Marketing for Rural Small Business I introduced the idea of increasing your power to pull visitors to out-of-the-way rural locations by joining with similar local businesses and promoting yourselves as a group.

I featured two groups of potters in North Carolina that work together on their marketing efforts to drive traffic to their individual studios: The Potters of the Roan and The Penland Potters.

And in Handmade Collaborative Marketing,I described the team support system that Etsy has created for its individual sellers.

More artists than ever before are exploring collaborative marketing. Art Marketing Through Partnerships: A Marketing Tip written by Kim Cady describes how artists can take a subject or theme they like painting (in her example, cats and dogs), and joining hands with community organizations and businesses that share that theme.

As Ms Cady points out, the new year is a good time to re-think our businesses and how we might reach out to others and create win-win situations for all involved. Finding ways to promote your artwork locally is especially important for artists, whose work can celebrate that ’sense of place’ in ways few other businesses in a region can.

Marketing Your Art Locally: 7 Reasons to Market Your Artwork Closer to Home encourages artists to take advantage of the stronger motivation many customers have to ‘buy local’ these days, and to enjoy the advantages that being the ‘big fish’ in the smaller pond could bring.

Painting historic homes and buildings or capturing the spirit and energy of your town’s festivals in your art will create value-added products that local businesses and community organizations can sell for you, increasing sales for everyone and allowing you to continue creating.

Many small businesses in rural and small towns proudly feature the work of their local artists by selling not only their originals, but giclees (fine quality productions) in all sizes, and even refrigerator magnets and postcards. Tourists, in particular, often prefer to purchase handmade art and crafts as souvenirs of the places they visit rather than mass-produced memorabilia.

What partnerships or collaborative marketing efforts can you explore for your business?

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Just One Little Mistake

by Karen Wylie

in Marketing, Seasonal Business, Tourism

bed-breakfast-innIn yesterday’s post I discussed that the different customer groups a small business serves, seem to influence whether or not it has a website.

If it’s a tourist business or one that hopes to attract visitors, that business is more likely to have a website or blog. If their business focuses on local customers, they are far less likely to have their own site or to keep it up-to-date.

And if a business serves and attracts both local and out-of-town customers, well, it can be downright confusing.

Last January I needed to find some nearby bed and breakfasts that were open during the Winter so I could recommend them to our out-of-town customers. I remembered meeting a nice woman at a local event but could only recall the name of her B&B, not her name. Not to worry. I found her website right away and sent an email inquiry to confirm that she was open during January. But my email was returned as undeliverable. Supposedly her email address didn’t exist. 

I went back to her website and verified that I had indeed typed the email address listed onscreen correctly. So I called the telephone number listed on the site instead, which did work. When her spouse answered the phone and I told him about my difficulty in emailing them, his response was actually shocking. 

He said, “Everybody knows not to use that email address. It’s not good anymore.”

So here we go again. Everybody Knows.

But in this case who is everybody? It’s one thing for friends and family to be told an email address is no longer ‘good’, and to use another. But how in the world would potential customers - out of town visitors who found their website and wanted more information - know they should not use the email address posted on their site, and that they should call and get another one instead? 

I tried several times to help the B&B owner understand that he was asking potential customers to jump through many hoops just to find out information about staying with him. But he seemed to think it was just one little mistake. And he found me more frustrating and more of a problem than the customers he was losing.

Later I also spoke to his wife, to make sure she understood the seriousness of the problem. She acted appropriately concerned, saying that the email address had been changed the previous year, and their web designer was supposed to make the change on their website. She acted shocked that her email address hadn’t been changed, and said she’d contact her web designer right away.

When I got an earful about how expensive web designers were, and how long it took them to make site changes, I made sure to stress that correcting her email address was a five minute fix. I even offered to stop by and make the change myself on her computer, so she could see how it was done.

When I saw the B&B owner recently, a full year later, she told me what a horrible year she’d had in 2008. During one month they’d actually rented only four room nights. But she knew it wasn’t just her business, because the economy was bad all over.

And I had to agree that, yes, it is pretty bad all over. But for this small business owner, it was much worse than it had to be. Because guess what? Even after I brought the situation to her attention last year, she never corrected the email address on her website. I came home and checked. The bad email address is still posted as the one and only email address that potential guests should use if they want more information about the B&B.

It’s been that way for at least two years now. The phone number is correct, but the email address wrong. It’s just one little mistake, but here’s the deal.

It’s one thing for an out-of-date website to be ineffective and do you and your business no good.

But it’s quite another for your website to be so out-of-date that it actually publishes wrong information about you, literally sabatoging your efforts to be profitable or even stay in business.

If your business has multiple customer groups (like local residents and out-of-town visitors who need more direction to even find you), your website will need to be organized clearly in its site structure so that each group can find the information they need. How many customer groups do you serve?

And be sure to check your website for incorrect phone numbers, email addresses, wrong directions, old store locations, or prices that are no longer valid. Maybe your website isn’t going to help you, but be sure it isn’t hurting you.

Put yourself in the shoes of a tourist planning an out-of-town trip, researching possible places to stay. When you’re surfing the web and gathering information, what are you most likely to do? Send a quick email with questions? Or wait until the next day to call on your own dime? And if you do send an email that comes back as undeliverable, what is the impression you have of that business? Are you likely to snail mail them or try to call them? Or do you simply go to the next business on your list?

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