This is the final installment in our

Another area of your business that you can look for ways to improve is your marketing. Review your marketing plan and try to find ways that you have not been using to boost your business when things start picking up again.

Finding new ways of marketing will lead to a larger customer base and potential increases in revenue. A key way to attracting new customers and keeping old customers coming back is to try new and different marketing strategies to attract new business.

Email Marketing

In a nutshell, email marketing uses email to establish a relationship with customers, similar to how traditional marketing uses regular mail to send out fliers and postcards. The goal is provide value to your customers, so you do not want to only send them sales notices and advertisements for your products. You also want to provide them with information that they can use.

With that said, once you have a list of customers you can email to, it is an effective way to instantly notify them of new products, specials, and sales.

The rules and strategies of email marketing are beyond the scope of this article, but you should know a few things…

1. Do not purchase a list from a third party.
2. Offer people something of value to get them sign up for your newsletter or other email campaigns.
3. Have them confirm that they want to receive information from you. This will significantly decrease the chances that you will be accused of sending them spam email.
4. Provide your subscribers with value in the emails you send out.

A great source of information on email marketing is Jimmy D. Brown’s List Profit System. It is a 6-system that will show you how to grow your email list. It will also show you how to use your email list to send subscribers valuable content that builds a strong relationship, resulting in increased sales and profit.

I have learned a lot from Jimmy and I highly recommend any of his products.

If you are interested in an email service, I recommend Aweber. They are reliable and offer great customer service. This is the service that I use in my own business.

Social Networking

Social networking uses the power of social networks like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and others, to establish online relationships. These relationships can then be used to create opportunities to gain more customers and clients, and to drive traffic to your online business.

Social networking, when used properly , can be a great marketing tool for your business. Many small business owners are now realizing the importance of establishing a web presence. But that web presence goes beyond just having a website or a blog. It is almost a business requirement to have an online social profile for your business.

Many of the larger social networking sites have separate groups representing various areas of interest. You are bound to find one that will be a good fit for your business market. There are even smaller networks that are dedicated to only one particular area of interest. It is quite possible that there may be a dedicated network for your target market.

Now, to be quite honest, social networking is a beast by itself. If you would like a more in depth source of information on social networking, social media, and social marketing, I would suggest following Charles Heflin.

I have been a member of his Social Media Networking private membership for well over a year now, and I can tell you that Charles knows his stuff when it comes to social networking.

But I will let Charles tell more about his ideas himself. Download his report – The Syndication Revelation.

Conclusion

In this series we have discussed a number of things you can do to improve your business using your available time during a slow season or an economic downturn. Rather than worrying about the slow times, use your time wisely to brainstorm and create new strategies to keep your business growing and moving forward.

Remember, your business is what you make of it!

Read the rest of the Slow Business Article Series.

Any successful business knows how to treat its customers. Attracting customers is not the end of it. Once you have convinced them to do business with you and buy your products or use your services, you need to make sure that you keep them satisfied.

Customer satisfaction is an integral part of your business image. Neglecting your customers will ruin your reputation in their eyes and in the business community in general.

Simple Ways to Give Your Customers Attention

Emails

You may have hundreds of customers and quite honestly, if only some of them contact you by email in a week, you may still be overwhelmed with emails. It wouldn’t be practical to answer them all and still run your business. However, if you let them wait a day or two for a response, you will probably lose a customer.  If they do try to email you again, they may not be so nice the second time around.

So, what do you do? Create an auto response that will go out to your customer as soon as you receive their email. Try not to be too generic in your response. This way, at least the customer will know that you have acknowledged receipt of their email.

Draft email responses to the most common questions you get from your customers. As soon as you can, respond to your customer’s question. Not all questions will be the same so you will have to tweak the draft responses to suit each situation. But it will still be a huge timesaver rather than having to create each response from scratch.

Surveys

Create a survey that you can add to your business website or blog. In your survey be sure to allow for open comments so that customers have a chance to share their opinion with you in their own words. Everyone values the opportunity to be heard. Make time to read through the survey responses and make changes to your business where practical.

Start a Business Blog

If you have not started a business blog then you need to do so as soon as possible. A blog provides content and information about your business, your products, and your services. Customers can visit your blog and read about upcoming events related to your business – new products, new services, sales, and special offers.

Repeat Customers

Reward your loyal customers with something special every now and then. Give them coupon offers, free merchandise for referrals, and hold contests where they can win a nice prize. If the incentives are good, they will continue to be your loyal customers for a long time.

Potential Customers

Create a follow up system for potential customers who for some reason did not do business with you the first time around. Don’t give up on them too easily.

Do a follow up call or send a follow up email to inquire if there is anything that you can do to be of service to them. Do not be too pushy, but a nice personal follow up can do wonders.

These are all ideas you can flesh out during a slow business season.

Next in the series – Explore New Ways to Market Your Business.

Read the rest of the Slow Business Article Series.

There are different things that we can be doing during the downtime that can have a direct impact on our business goals. For example…

Streamline Your Business Processes

Now is the perfect time to tackle any outstanding tasks that you may have been putting off because you were too busy. Streamlining your business process is always a positive change that we can make. Usually, we do not have enough time to take a step back and examine our business processes.

Look at your daily routine and see if there are tasks that are non-essential, or tasks that can be done faster or with less effort.

Do you have any filing that needs to be done? As we approach tax time now is the perfect time to start organizing all your receipts and invoices to get prepared to send to your accountant or to make it easier to find things if you are doing your own taxes.

Create a system to file away these receipts and invoices so that you are ahead of the game for next year.

A slow business period is the prefect time to do things like that.

Now is also a perfect time to review your business goals. Refine your business plan and your marketing plan and make adjustments based on what you learned last year and where you want your business to go this year. Remember that business plans and marketing plans are not static and should be reviewed on a regular basis.

Research any new business ideas you have been thinking about. See if now is a good time to start adding new products or services to your business mix. Take a look at your competitors and see what they seem to be doing right and what they are doing wrong and see how you can apply that knowledge to your own business.

If you think you have the budget for it, start thinking about tasks that can be outsourced. Or start making plans to hire administrative help.

All of these things can help to make your business run more smoothly and add to your bottom line in the end.

Learn Something New

Downtime is the perfect opportunity to improve your skill set and learn something new. Learning something new means that you may be able to offer more services to generate more income. On the flip side, it can mean that now you know how to do something that you were paying someone else to do. Now you can do it.

Use this time to take a course or learn a new software that will enhance your business skills. Find a course at your local community college. If you prefer, there are many great places online where you can sign up for e-courses.

Adding to you current knowledge is a great investment in yourself. You never know when that knowledge will come in useful.

Next in the series… Customer Best Practices – Optimizing Customer Service.

Read the rest of the Slow Business Article Series.

Unfortunately, I have not been very good at implementing these ideas in my own business. But that is about to change.

I have enrolled in Brad Semp’s Certified Cashmap Developer Program.  My intentions are twofold. I would like to learn more about implementing process maps as way of documenting my own business process, and I would like to branch off into consulting for small businesses in my local area to help them systemize their own processes through the use of process maps.

The course consists of four sessions over the course of four weeks starting next Tuesday, January 27. Each session is expected to run about 60 – 90 minutes. The format is pretty neat. It is a combination of live video streaming, slides, and interaction.

Last night we had a test run just to make sure everything was up and running and ready for next week. Brad opened up an impromptu question and answer session. And what was supposed to be  a brief test session ended up being an hour and half long interactive session. In my opinion, that’s going beyond what’s expected.

I was pretty impressed by Brad’s willingness to answer anything we threw at him. Although we weren’t given any details (I can certainly respect that) I can tell you that Cashmap Systems has a lot in store for this coming year. So if you have been looking for something new and fresh to add to your set of skills and your toolbox, you may want to check out the CCD program.

I am looking forward to participating in this course and then implementing what I learn in my own business. Then I can’t wait to start working with local clients to help them to reach their business goals. Once I have acquired the necessary skills that is.

If you are interested in seeing what the program is all about you can read more here. I’ll let Brad tell you more about what the program is all about.

If you are interested in seeing what Cashmaps are all about you can download this free package…

Resource Cashmap Business Building Strategy – There are 14 individual maps for you to take a look at.

I would be thrilled to meet some of you in the program if you decide that this would be an opportunity you would like to pursue.

The last thing you want to do during these challenging times is to panic and loose sight of your overall business plan. Panic will only make a bad situation worse.

A slow period is not a setback, but an opportunity.

In this article series we will focus on two areas…

• what you should not do during a slow time
• options that you should consider during slow time

4 Things You Shouldn’t Be Doing During a Slow Season

Cut Your Marketing Budget

When times are lean the natural thing for us to do is to cut back on spending. However, in business, this may not be the best thing to do. Of course you will want to keep an eye on your budget and your overall spending, but rather than cutting back on spending across the board you should simple be looking at reallocating your available funds.

Cutting back on marketing dollars during the slow season is a mistake that many businesses make. When you reduce your advertising budget, you are actually cutting back on your presence in areas that can make a difference in your business. If you no longer seem to be around, no one will come knocking when business starts to pick up again.

Potential customers will go else where in search of goods and services. Even past customers may move on if they feel that you are no longer around. This could actually cause you to spend more on advertising during the busy season just to win back some clients.

This is surely not a good way to run your business.

Whatever you decide to do, try to keep a solid marketing campaign running. If not it may end up costing you more in the end.

Stop Promoting Your Business

This actually goes hand in hand with marketing and advertising.

You should continue to network and get to know other people in your market to keep your name around. But, the main promotional tool you have is your business website.

You are able to add various things to your website to keep your visitors interested and coming back. During a slow season they may not really buy anything, but keeping them coming back will make sure that when things are better they will be more likely to buy from you.

A slow season is not the time to take a break and let things just sit there. Add fresh content to your site on a regular basis. While it is slow you will have plenty of time to dedicate to updating your website.

Cut Prices on Products and Services

During slow times many business are tempted to reduce prices to make a sale. While this may seem like a good idea to attract customers and make some sales, it may not have the results you were really looking for.

Granted, your business may get a sales boost from time to time, but what will you do when things pick up again? Are you going to raise your sales prices back to their original levels? I don’t think so.

If customers see you starting to raise prices you are headed for trouble.

There are other ways to stimulate demand other than just simply reducing prices. We will take a look at those later in the series.

Stop Buying What You Need

Although you should be watching your budget and avoiding unnecessary expenses, you should also be looking out for deals to get more value for your dollar.

Look around for those business that are cutting prices. Buy things that you know you need and will use. You may be spending money now, but you will be saving more in the long run.

Next in the series… 2 Things You Can Do For Your Business During Slow Times.

Read the rest of the Slow Business Article Series.