Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Knowledge is power for business owners

By Jay NaPier

While many business owners choose to focus on the negative, many profitable business owners choose to focus on the positive and focus on what they can do to be successful in their business. the first step is to have a positive mindset and focus on what's important to you and your business, that would be profit.

Take a close look at what you sell the services and products and see what you can do to make those services and products more profitable. It might have been years since you've increased your price, so now's a good time to do so.

staying connected with your customers and clients is important to every business. It easier to keep a customer than it is to find new ones. What are you doing to thank your customers for their business? Are you sending out Christmas cards? Anniversary discounts? what about wishing your customers a happy new year and letting them know that you're not increasing your prices for the new year?

It's easier to keep the customers you have that is to get new ones. Smart business owners know that there are only two ways to increase your business, get the customers you have now to purchase more product or purchase more often. Packaging your products or services together makes it easy to increase your bottom line. A dry cleaner might price their shirt services at $1.25 per shirt or $10 for 10 shirts. They could also offer to clean customers close by the pound, which is cheaper and simply charge a monthly membership fee.

It's a great idea to offer bonuses with a purchase. Our company gives away free Flip Mino HD video camcorders with purchase of our monthly video marketing program. a dry cleaner might give away a free lint roller with every $50 in cleaning.

Take a close look at your advertising budget. Too many business owners are still paying hundreds of dollars a month for ineffective yellow page advertising. Today, it's easier to Google a business than it is to go searching in the Yellow Pages. a simple e-commerce campaign is easy to do and cheaper than the Yellow Pages.

Build a list. This might be one of the most obvious answers to the financial challenges of today for business owners. When you have a list of your customers you can very easily send them an e-mail with specials that you're having, so if you have a bad week you simply send a promotion out to your list. This process is easily done and can make you thousands of dollars over a 12 month period.

Started buy local campaign. Everyone love to support their local community, you simply have to remind them from time to time. Start with your own business first. When possible, by everything from a local company. Now expand to your family. Build a group of 50 to 100+ business owners who'll commit to help promote a local portal designed for your community. Each business owner will put a sign in their window that notes the website and the buy local logo that associates you as a part of the local community campaign. "A recent study found that for every $100 spent in a chain store, $14 went back into the local economy. For a locally owned business, it was $45," , says Stacy Mitchell author of"Big-Box Swindle. Most chambers of commercedo not invest in the marketing required to fully assist local business owners.

When you consider your options are sink or swim, I've always found that swimming is a lot more fun.

About the Author:

No comments: