First Step Marketing

The ideas listed below are useful, only if they are an integral part of a larger, carefully co-ordinated marketing effort. Some ideas may be unsuitable for some types of product or service; some may clash with certain images; and others may simply be too expensive. Remember that the poor execution of any one of the ideas will render it ineffectual at best and harmful at worst. Read the rest of this entry »

Undoubtedly, the type of business you start will determine the people who will become customers. The first step to reaching customers is to draw up a profile of the kind of client you’d like to attract.

Defining your customer means you can then narrow down your choice of the marketing methods you use. Read the rest of this entry »

Surprise Them with Shipping Costs

Shoppers don’t like surprises. Before you put your customers through your order taking process, let them know what the actual shipped price of their order will be.

You can do this in one of two ways. First, present the customer with the full amount of his order before you ask for his credit card. If you can’t have offer that calculation, then have complete shipping and handling charges listed on your Web store—and make that list easy to find. This is even more critical for your international customers.

If you want to sell to international customers, then you have to let them know it. Give them the international shipping costs before they reach your order form. Read the rest of this entry »

Your Web site is here to serve your customers—not impress them. You job is to design a site and offer a shopping experience that gives consumers a quick, safe, and easy way to purchase something from your Web store.

So before you sit down with your Web consultant, and before your Web designer puts pointer to screen, be sure the 10 ways to drive customers away from your site are avoided.

Confuse Your Customers

That might be funny to you, but treating your customer with no respect will drive him away from your site for sure. And one sure-fire way to drive him away is to confuse him.

Keep your navigation simple. You’re there to sell. Customers are there to buy. Make it easy for them to find your products and buy them. If they can’t find what they want and order it in three mouse clicks, you run the risk of losing them. So, organize your site material logically from the customer’s point of view. Be sure to include clear directions for navigating the site from your home page. Remember that the home page of your Web store serves a variety of functions. It’s a map of your store, a welcome mat, and a marketing message all in one. Read the rest of this entry »

If you plan to start a business where it’s standard procedure to collect payment before you provide your product or service to customers, you can skip this section. Obviously, most retail businesses conduct pay-as-you-go transactions: customers can choose to not use their own money to pay up front by using a credit card; however, their purchase then becomes more expensive with the subsequent interest charges if they don’t pay it off all at once. But that’s their problem, not yours. You still get paid up front. Read the rest of this entry »

Because until you do, until you begin to take it seriously, until you give it the earnest attention it demands, your Prototype will continue to be the only thing it could hope to be under the circumstances—a crap shoot!

At GERBER Business Development Corporation, we have created tools for our small business clients to begin the often arduous task of making demographic and psychographic determinations, and how to position their Prototype in the mind of their consumer. The impact has been astonishing.

Small businesses that acted like small businesses when we met them began to operate with intelligence.

Their customers came vividly alive to them, often for the very first time.

Inquiry, the active solicitation of specific information, and controlled experimentation replaced the guessing, blind hope, and feverish busy work that preceded them. Read the rest of this entry »

Only five years ago, most markets were dominated by a few leading companies, mighty icons with household names that seemed immortal. How quaint all that now seems. Today’s competitors are far more numerous, able, and fierce than ever before because they have to be: What used to be outstanding performance is now the norm.

A useful analogy is the sport of speed skating. In the 1980 Winter Olympics, American Eric Heiden accomplished an unprecedented feat—he won five gold medals Though it was unbeatable in 1980, twenty-five competitors surpassed Heiden’s record in Nagano, Japan, eighteen years later in the 5,000-meter race, and did so by at least 12 seconds. The gold medalist, Gianni Romme of the Netherlands, covered the distance in 6 minutes 22 seconds, eclipsing Heiden’s time by an unbelievable 40 seconds. For that competition, Heiden would not have even qualified. Read the rest of this entry »

In an age in which customers are scarce, any company’s best practices seldom remain proprietary. Business models are shamelessly imitated with inner corporate workings becoming public knowledge. Best practices travel at Internet speed.

People are becoming masters at imitation. If you don’t have a good idea yourself, you can always knock off someone else’s product. An imitation is not necessarily an exact copy. You use details to create a difference: the look, the product extension, the packaging—anything that can make the other company’s idea look less new And this is easier than it used to be. If once you could hold on to a secret formula for years or even decades, now it’s a matter of months or days before your competitors catch up and replicate it. Read the rest of this entry »

The new market leaders know that the greatest constraint on today’s customers is time—more critical even than money. The broader choices, the constant stream of innovations, and the pace of contemporary life conspire to crowd people’s schedules. Whether you’re in the market for a CD player for home or a new supplier of components for your company, you don’t have time to evaluate every option, consider every shred of information, and explore every contingency—even though it would probably be useful to do so.

Time is a flexible commodity: We willingly spend more of it on some activities than on others. A busy manager for whom every minute counts will happily spend hours on thegolf course, but an easygoing person with time to chat will hang up angrily on a telemarketer who calls at dinnertime. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine a modern Rip Van Winkle waking up from a twenty-year sleep, He would surely be amazed at how the world has changed: He would be bewildered by new technology, bowled over at the speed and clutter of life in 2001, dazzled by the sheer abundance being thrust at him. The torrent of new products, goods, services, ideas, and innovations vying for his attention would be shocking.

How would he react? I suspect, like people through the ages in suddenly changed circumstances, Rip would reset his bearings from his old perspective before cautiously testing the new water. Like a child who clings to a teddy bear well into adolescence, or a lottery winner who repaints the old house, he would cling to the familiar and be slow to embrace what is new. Read the rest of this entry »