Effective SMS Marketing by a gym In Ireland
On Friday I received the following SMS message from Crunch Fitness Gym in Clonsilla, Dublin that I used to be a member of. It said “ST PATRICKS SPECIAL. Rejoin Crunch fitness before 7pm Mon 19th and receive a free Nike Rockstar course and no membership joining fee. Ltd spaces avail. 01 8025906″
This is a good example of using SMS marketing to try and reactivate dormant customers using a direct response mechanism. As we know it is much easier to sell to past and existing customers than it is to sell to new ones. Seeing as the cost to send 1 sms message can be less than 5cent this makes it a much more cost effective and less wasteful medium, than sending a direct mail packages by post.
Also at present response rates for SMS marketing in Ireland can sometimes be as high as 40%, I think people are much more likely to read an sms message than they are to sift through the junk mail at home. Receiving a SMS message is still something that is very hard to ignore as opposed to receiving a ‘junk’ mailing piece.
This SMS message was also good as it made some attempt to give a reason for the promotion. People like to know the reason why you are making them an offer and a St Patrick’s day offer is as good as any.
Another plus point of this message is the use of a free offer and waiving of the joining fee; this helps to strengthen the offer and makes it easier for people to try. An even better approach might have been “no joining fee and first month free – try us out a no cost”
Using a deadline for the offer is another positive thing about this SMS marketing message, by specifically giving a date and time prospects know that they need to at quickly. This is quite a strong call to action. Perhaps it could have been made even stronger by saying call 01 8025906 now avail of this offer.
Can you use sms marketing in your business? It can be very cost effective and relatively straightforward to implement. Don’t think that you can just use it to reactivate old clients; there are a whole host of other possibilities for it. It is particularly suited to time sensitive offers such as notifying customers at a bar that they are running a comedy night or having a special happy hour.
Joint Venture Marketing Ideas for a Furniture Retailer
Sometimes the most cost effective way of promoting a business is to piggy back on the back of an existing one. The marketing jargon for this is a joint venture and is where you work with a business that already has a relationship with customers that match the profile of your business.
If done correctly then this can be a winner all round for both of the businesses involved and for the customers. The business that has the customer list (the host business) benefits by being able to offer something of value to their customers, the business making the offer (the beneficiary business) gets exposure to its target market very cost effectively and the customer gets an offer that may be of value to them.
Here are some examples of Joint Ventures that a furniture retailer could use. They revolve around doing JV’s with businesses that have customers that might be in the position to purchase new furniture. For example people that have just moved house. I would recommend that you try and do a JV with estate agents where you could give them a voucher worth say €100 off new furniture. This will benefit the real estate agents by making them look good and it will generate leads for the furniture business.
Another idea might be to approach property developers and offer furniture for free for use in show homes in return for the furniture company to be able to leave promotional materials or discount vouchers for each visitor.
The furniture company also consider approaching small builders and decorators who do renovation and improvement type work for home owners. Most likely once you have had your home redecorated you will then consider getting in new furniture.
Also how about targetting properties that have recently been sold and offering a complete package for furnishing the house.
These are just some simple cost effective ways to grow a furniture business.
Are You Making as Much Money From Your Business as You Should be?
Today we are going to look at one way that you can make more money from your business. A lot of the time business owners focus solely on attracting new clients and customers. Also a lot of the time they only offer one service. Whilst this is good intially from the point of being able to clearly explain what you do and to focus, it does limit the amount of money you can earn from each of your clients.
An example of this would be the company that does the bookkeeping for my Irish business they have been doing my books month in, month out for over two years now. They charge €50 per month which is very cost effective and saves me a lot of hassle. But I think they are missing out. You see I am pleased with the service they provide, and we have built up a good working realtionship. Yet they have never once offered me any additional services and I’m willing to bet that it is the same for each of their other clients too.
What they need to do is to identify a back end product that they can provide and offer to their existing customers. To do this they could put together a questionnaire and ask me what other similar services I might be looking for that they could then provide. For example I might be interested in payroll services or more in depth financial forecasting assistance. If they didn’t feel comfortable providing any additional services themselves then they could approach a 3rd party company and offer to pass on new customers to them for a % of the ongoing residual business.
So in this example say that my bookkeeper has 100 clients and she is currently getting €50 per month from each one. This means her turnover is €5000 per month. What if she was to offer all of her customers a more detailed financial forcasting service which she charged say an additional €50 per month?
Say only 20% of her clients decided to take her up on her offer, that would represent €1000 per month additional turnover, or a 20% growth in her business. All without finding any new customers but by finding out the needs of her existing customers and meeting them.
Based on this example what other products or services could you offer your customers?
If they have purchased from you before then they already know you and must have liked or trusted you enough to do business in the past. Don’t make the mistake of not going back to them and finding out if there is anything else that you might be able to do for them.
Don’t use your company name as the headline of your adverts
Flick through any Irish local newspaper or perhaps the Independent directory and you will see the same basic error time and time again. Business owners who have created there own advertisments and who think it is a good idea to use the name of their company as the headline for their advertisements. So you see adverts which proclaim in large letters ABC Carpentry services. This is a most unsatisfactory waste of space and effort and shows a huge misunderstanding in the way that people react to advertisements.
Lets take a step back. If you are in the newsagents and are browsing the papers and magazines what is it that makes you read a particular article or pick up a certain magazine? It is the headlines for the article either on the front cover or throughout the paper. The reason for this is that when we are reading we subconsciously scan the headlines to decide what to read next and tend to read the articles that interest us.
It is the same when looking at advertisements. A headline like ABC Carpentry services is not going to really attract us to read the advertisement. On the other hand something like ‘Homeowners: How to Get a Solid Wood Floor Laid in One Day For Less Than The Cost Of A Laminate’ is going to raise curiousity and attract all those people looking for wood flooring.
Headlines act as a filter for your advert, they should work like magnets to attract those looking for your products and services and filter out those that are not. Remember not everyone is going to be looking for your particular product or service. The idea of a headline is to appeal and attract those that are.
Having a good headline is the first step in making the advertising for your Irish small business more effective. Future issues of the Better Business Results Blog will look at other ways you can improve your response rates and get the most from your marketing budget.
Great service and good marketing in Ireland!
Like many people with the advent of a new year my thoughts turn to what goals can I set to improve for this year. Top of my list was to start to take regular exercise, with two young children and busy business commitments one thing I have let slip over the last two years is my fitness. So this year like many others I vowed to get myself fit.
I did consider joining a gym, but initially I felt that I’d start with something that I could do from home without having to get in the car for. I decided to start with running, we live near the Griffeen Valley Park and there is plenty of space for running so I thought I’d give that a shot.
The next thing to sort out then was a decent pair of trainers (or runners as they call them here in Ireland) like most people I had experienced pretty poor service when it came to dealing with sports shop in the past. So I turned to google for advice (as I find I seem to do for most things these days). I searched for running shoes in Ireland and straight away at the top of the search results in the paid google adwords spot, I saw an advertisement for a running shoe specialist company called Amphibian King. They offer the specialised free fitting service where they film you running on a small track and then analyse the way your foot hits the ground. Based on this information they then recommend exactly the right running shoes for you.
Being a bit of a gadget fiend I liked the idea of someone filming and analysing the way I run so I hopped in the car and drove over to Bray in Co Wicklow where Amphibian King are based.
To cut a long story short Amphibian King and Darren Kelly who served me impressed me with good service and savvy marketing in the following ways:
1) They were using google adwords to attract targetted prospects to their business
2) They use a website to provide further information
3) They give you one on one dedicated service – Darren spent over 45 minutes with me measuring my shoes and trying on and testing at least 3 pairs of potential matches – all based on the requirements of my feet not on how much they could sell me.
4) Darren was able to add value by giving me additional advice on how to start a running program, he even showed me his website with free exercises for warming up and strenghtening my legs
5) When I decided on a pair of shoes and was purchasing I was asked to complete a customer details sheet which captured my contact details (very important for following up with clients) and also where they record details of my feet so they can serve me better next time
6) They gave me a €10 discount voucher to give to a friend – a great example of a referral program getting your exisitng customers to talk about you to their friends and then have a reason to visit you is a great marketing tool.
7) They also gave me a €10 discount voucher to use for myself for when I need a new pair of runners. In about 500 miles time as Darren suggested – so in my case in about 5 years time 
As you can see none of this is rocket science, but how many businesses in Ireland do this – not many that I come accross.
Good on you Amphibian King and Darren Kelly.
Now I just have to get out there and use them!
Low cost approach for getting outside catering customers for a Dublin cafe
I posted the following reply on the askaboutmoney forum to a Dublin cafe owner looking to expand his business by winning customers for outside catering:
There are a number of ways you can generate this type of business. Probably the best place to start is by compiling a list of all the neighbouring businesses that fall into your target market, i.e are likely to be having meetings.
Once you have compiled the list then the next step is to target them the most effective and low cost way will be by calling in and leaving a brochure/menu with the owner/main admin person most likely to be responsible for booking catering for meetings.
You should make some kind of good offer to try and get their business, such as a free sandwich platter so they can try you out. This might sound expensive but you need to consider that giving away a little bit of free food in this manner is likely to be much more cost effective than spending a fortune on advertising.
Be sure to build up a database of prospects and customers and just keep following up with them to remind them you are there. Then over time when they need a outside caterer you will be top of their mind.
Make your marketing accountable
Ok so you are up and running with one or more marketing and advertising campaigns, business is flowing and you are feeling pretty good about yourself. Now ask yourself these questions, which marketing method is the most cost effective? Which method bring in customers and which is totally wasteful?
If you know the answers to these questions then give yourself a pat on the back, however if you are like most small businesses in Ireland then you probably haven’t a clue. You are subscribing to the spray and pray method of marketing, you know that if you fling enough mud then some of it will stick.
The problem with this way of trying to grow your business is that it is hugely wasteful in terms of time and money. What if you knew that the advert you took out in the paper each week actually wasn’t bringing you in any customers they we all in fact coming from your website? If you knew this information you could cancel the adverts and divert the money for this to enhancing the website further. Or what if you found out that a large percentage of your business came from your Golden Pages advert, then perhaps it would be worth considering in other Irish business directories.
So how do you go about finding out how effective a particular method of advertising is? The answer is that you need to implement a way to track and measure responses specific to each advert. In other words you need to be able to pinpoint exactly where each lead and in turn new client came from.
To do this isn’t actually that difficult you just need to incorporate some kind of unique direct response mechanism into your marketing. For example you may have one telephone number that you just use in your Golden Pages advert. Or you might run an advert in a paper that requires prospects to send back a coupon which you have a special tracking code on.
Once you start capturing this information it is possible to track exactly where each enquiry came from, you can then track exactly what process was used to convert that prospect to a customer.
Over time this will allow you to build up a very accurate picture of which is the most effective way to attract and convert customers. From this information it becomes very easy to then drop marketing methods which are not paying there way and ramp up the ones that are.
The Perfect Follow Up System
Most business owners know that the power of follow up is huge, whether it be with prospects or with customers that you have done business with before. However time and time again I find that even though business owners know it they are not practicing it.
The main reason tends to be a lack of time and no system in place to make it happen. Well it doesn’t have to be that way! I’ll let you into a little secret, there is a system out there that will do 80% of the work for you. You simply enter the name and postal address of the recipient, pick a card from a catalogue of hundreds, type a message, press send and that is it! Your card is printed and put in an envelope with a real stamp attached and posted.
Think this sounds like it is going to be expensive? Think again. To send a postcard including the card and postage is less than 90cent and you can send a greeting card, including postage for €1.15. It is far cheaper than going to a card shop and far less hassle.
If you think this sounds like it could benefit your business, and I’ve yet to find a business that this couldn’t benefit, then please give me a call on 087 9556444 and I can walk you through the system and even let you try sending a few cards for free.
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