Promote yourself for less
With the financial world sending every man and his dog nuts with talk of meltdowns it’s a bit daunting thinking about the future. There is the same amount of people competing for an ever decreasing pool of work, so it’s time to think a bit out of the box when maintaining the amount of jobs coming in.
A wise lady, in fact it was the lady who started the Colorado brand from the states in her later years once said “Early to bed and Early to rise but it always pays to advertise”.
She is dead right; it’s no good just being the best trade’s person about if no one knows about you. So how do you go about getting the awareness you want for less money and remain credible with potential clients?
There are a few ways to do this; remembering there is no one method or medium of advertising and promotion that is the “Silver Bullet”. Effective awareness is a combination of many media types (TV, Radio, Papers, Phone Books and word of mouth) but there are new items in the list of tools to help you get your name out there and at the top of everyone’s mind.
Use the internet but use it wisely. The net is a great way to communicate not just with email and newsletters, now with social networking and instant messaging it’s the way that the next generation communicate. If you ask someone in their early 20’s to look something up in the yellow pages, they probably couldn’t tell you what one looked like anyway.
Ask them to Google something, they are on to it faster than you reply to their email enquiry on your service.
Get a website, you don’t need to be some web tech person – most ISP’s give you web space part of your account so why not put a page together on your business and then register the domain ( www.netregistry.com.au) they will sort on how to point the name to your site and there you go 24/7 advertising that you were paying money for but never thought to use.
Turn customers into fans! Did you do a great job? Did the person say – “I will tell my friends about you”. Often the retention on this info about who did a good job for what and when, get’s lost in translation over the next 7 days. Research shows that people’s retention for details tapers off and becomes inaccurate after only a short period of time. Remind them on a daily basis – get magnets for their fridge, stickers for their car and a voucher to give a friend for a discount on their friends work.
Get them printed, the lowest cost way to get these sorts of magnets and vouchers printed is www.vistaprint.com.au you can also get business cards and heaps of other gear and it’s only going to cost you the freight in a lot of cases. These sorts of things turn customers into fans, because they have a point of reference to give people the right info. They will tell their friends “hang on I will get the number it’s on the fridge” and you will get the referral.
There are more ways and we want to hear from you – what are your tips to get your name out there? Email us and let us know.
Email enquiries go unanswered
In a recent survey it was found that almost all general enquiries and a lot of support enquiries to larger companies go unanswered.
Big business seems to be ignoring some basic common sense and manners, if some one asks a question it’s only polite to answer. It’s surprising that these large companies are like this, you might think that they would be setting standards in customer service that others would want to emulate but it’s not the case.
Our in house policy is that all enquiries are answered same day, usually within a few hours is the average but no question goes unanswered by the end of play for the day. On the weekends, we still try to respond as quickly as possible and at the latest it’s Monday morning for an answer. This only happens if our staff are out of blackberry range or unable to gain the right info until Monday morning.
Some Tips for dealing with enquiries on the email.
- Set up a tracking system for enquiries, your web dudes can sort this for you.
- Be quick to respond and NEVER dismiss any enquiry no matter what it’s about.
- Find the right answer, take all day if you need to but be right when you respond.
- Respond to every email the same day if possible. If not make an appointment with them to let them know when they can expect an answer from you.
- Check your spam folder, genuine enquiries go missing and marked as spam a lot these days, even we get caught on that one.
- If the answer is complex, call the customer. They will be very happy to hear that you have taken the time to deal with their concerns in person. Yes it does take time and effort but a great customer relationship is worth it in the long run.
- Use your manners, even if they don’t. A lot of people now just shoot through a question and that’s it. Reply with a personal greeting and thank them for their enquiry, answer the question and even make a suggestion then end with the offer to help them further if they wish and sign off with a “Kind Regards” or the like.
