5 Tips to Successfully Promote your Business

Tips For Successful Promotion of your Businesses

Is there a way of determining a break–even point for promotion of a business?
I’ve come across at least one. It’s a complex function, using “quadratics”. For those not mathematically inclined, that’s a function that looks like “r = -as2 + bs + c”, where r is the revenue generated, s is the “spend” on advertising and promotion (in tens of thousands of dollars), and the a, b, c are constants.

The formula works for large businesses, but small to medium-sized enterprises do not have the “spend” needed to get precise values for “a, b and c” or the processes to accurately measure the revenue against the campaigns. However, working with these businesses has suggested that there are five aspects that any business must take into consideration when doing any promotional advertising. They don’t cost thousands of dollars and the basic information is not difficult to gather.

Tip #1: Know Your Buyers!

This is the basis of all marketing and sales efforts.
Many businesses assume that “everyone is a buyer”. This is the “The Better Mousetrap Trap” syndrome – people will not beat a path to your door even when you have the best, most useful product. Buyers buy solutions, not products. They buy benefits, not features.

Consider WHO buys your products or services. Which people see your product or service as a solution to their problem? What do they look like? Are they men? Women? Tall? Fat? Energetic? Couch potatoes? Do they like novelty? Old-fashioned stuff? Are they prone to follow trends?

Then look at what benefits or solutions appeal to these buyers. How do THEY describe those benefits? What words get what action?
Discover as much as possible about the people who will buy from you, especially their “action words”.

Tip #2: Use the words!

People do not read or listen well. They scan web pages, advertisements, articles and books. They actively hear only a small part of what others say.
However, the action words from the last tip make a difference. Your potential buyers stop scanning or passively listening and pay full attention to what you want to convey.

Until you get this level of attention, you do not have a buyer, even if they seem to agree with your message.

Sprinkle your message with those action words!

Tip #3: NEVER use future tenses and avoid the past tense!
The real trick to selling anything is to realize that the subconscious mind makes the decisions. The buyer’s conscious mind may require data to rationalize the decision, and you must give that information, but it does not decide on anything.
The subconscious mind ignores the past and cannot “see” the future. It sees and acts on the NOW. Once it reaches a decision, it works as if the action has happened. If the subconscious decides to buy, it does not matter if the actual delivery and payment is next week, next month or next year.

Tip #4: Get Out Of The Office!

Decide RIGHT NOW that your real business place is NOT your office or store. It is on the streets, in other people’s homes, at cafes, your hairdresser’s, the supermarket, the shopping mall and anywhere there are people.

Don’t wait for the phone to ring. Don’t wait for orders to come pouring down from the Web. People buy from people.

Go where your buyers are. If you are there when their subconscious decides to buy, you get the sales. By being there, you are doing the marketing!
This is especially true when it comes to the Web – it takes you to the places where people are – right at their computers.

Tip #5: ASK!

ASK people to look at your solution.
ASK them how they can do without your product or service.
ASK them to pay for it.
ASK the buyers what you can add to their purchase.
ASK them to come to your home office, even if it is a web page or your kitchen/dining room table.

In my years as a business coach and consultant, the number one reason for failure is that people DON’T ASK. The reluctance to ASK causes them to close themselves off in their home-based office, to talk about the future or the past rather than the present, to use words that avoid commitment or action and to never determine who their buyers might be.

There’s an old adage: “if you want to succeed, do what the failures don’t do”. Well, failures in small to medium businesses don’t follow the five tips you have just seen….