Many small business owners lose stacks of business because they don’t have anyone to answer their phone when they are not there. Instead they have valuable sales leads directed to an answer phone.

Each time they hear a click as the phone is put down with no message being left, that’s another potential customer lost.

The solution is to hire a professional phone answering service or virtual office. Prices range from about $40 upwards per month. Typically they will answer calls in your name (you divert when you are going out to the special number they give you).

They will take the callers details, what they are calling about and then text or e-mail you, so that you can call them back when convenient. You will not lose any leads this way and it gives the impression that you have a full time receptionist.

Some people might be tempted to divert to their mobile, but then it often cuts out, diverts to voicemail etc. If you give out your mobile as the only number, your potential customer is being forced to pay for a premium rate call or use one of your competitors. I wonder which option they will choose…

- Keith Banfield

This really amazes me. Business owners create a product or service and then try to find a market for them. How crazy is that? Why create a product or service and then go hunting, hoping that you’ll find someone to buy it? The correct way is to find your market first, identify the product or service that they are screaming out for and then give it to them.

So for example, Dyson identified that one of the frustrations in the vacuum cleaner market was that a
vacuum cleaner would start to lose suction as the dust bag filled up. Knowing that there were millions of potential customers with their hands up waiting for a bagless vacuum cleaner which would not lose suction, he created one and subsequently took a huge share of the vacuum cleaner market from under the noses of his competitors.

- Keith Banfield

Many small business owners see marketing as an expense rather than an investment. Ask them if a campaign has been successful and more often than not the answer will be a general “yes I think so, we haven’t done too badly”.

Responses like that are complete nonsense. What does haven’t done too badly mean?
You need to know precisely how much you’ve spent and how many leads you have generated from that spend.

You then need to qualify how good each lead is and monitor your conversion ratios. Only then will you be able to see how effective your marketing is.

Advertisement in Woman’s World Magazine Results
No of advertisements 6
Number of leads generated 65
Number of appointments made. 30
Number of sales 15
Total value of sales $ $14200
Total Cost of promotion $ $5000
Profit $ $9200

- Keith Banfield

There is a big difference between the advertising strategy you would adopt for marketing a large multimillion-dollar company and that for a small business. You see, the big guys have got big budgets and with big budgets you have more options.

The biggest difference though is that large companies are often focusing on building their brand and getting their name better known. As a small business, you will be more interested in creating direct response. In other words, you want your advertisement to generate leads that you can turn into orders. You want to be able to see a direct return on your investment and as quickly as possible.

So when you are planning any type of advertising, think about how you will measure the response and what response you expect, rather than building a brand.

- Keith Banfield

The Internet is such a powerful tool yet most businesses don’t realise how to utilise this powerful resource to generate leads for them. Some have pretty looking Websites but have no idea how to capture the traffic that visits their Website.

If you are serious about building your business, it is essential that you understand how to utilise the power of the Internet, capture the traffic that visits your site and learn how using cost per click campaigns you can drive targeted traffic to your site. You might want to check out https://adwords.google.com/select/ where you will discover a step-by-step process for setting up a ‘cost per click’ campaign.

If you haven’t seen this before, it is essentially like paying for an advertisement where you only pay for the responses you get. Imagine what it would be like if all the major magazines conducted their advertising programs in this way.

- Keith Banfield

Since we were talking about business cards in the last example, let me continue on the same subject, since virtually all businesses have a business card. At least 50% of all business cards that I am handed miss out the vital information that’s important to me, the person receiving the card. Take a look at the business cards that you’ve received and you’ll see what I mean.

They have a persons basic details on, a pretty logo and in most cases that’s about it. Oh dear, that will be costing that company money in lost business, lost opportunity and ultimately lost profits.

So what is the vital information? The answer is, what can you do for them? So your business card needs to clearly state on it what the receiver will get if they contact and work with your company. If you think about it, isn’t this really the only thing that they are interested in?

As well as telling someone what they will get from being a customer of yours, the second thought is to remember that you want someone who has your business card to remember you. Now we all remember names to a degree, if however you really want a potential customer to remember you, put your photograph on your business card. Do you remember faces more than names? I know I do.

Finally, make sure that you use the back of the business card too. This is a place where you could add a powerful marketing message. How many do you see that are left blank?
- Keith Banfield