Customer Service = Customer Retention

You already know that the best way to stay in business is to keep your customers as your customers.

Just to hit that nail on the head, Good Morning America this morning hosted this article about how one guy is working the customer retention angle to his benefit.

Essentially, the story reminds customers that if they contact businesses that they do business with and suggest that they might do business with someone else, the business that they’re calling may offer discounts and other perks to keep the customer a customer.

It’s easier than that last sentance reads. Everyone wants to save money. Everyone wants new things. If you can find a way to make your customers feel like you value them more than just as a revenue stream, you’ll have a better shot at keeping them coming back.

How The End of $300 Jeans Means the Begining of $130 Jeans

Rock and Republic, a leader in premium denim jeans, reacted to the recession in an interesting way: head on.

Famed for creating jeans that sold for well over $300 a pair, the company has now decided to go on a PR offensive promoting their mini-line of “Limited Edition Recession Collection“jeans. Instead of charging $300+, these jeans sell for around $130.

The brilliance of the promotion is that suddenly the idea of spending $130 on a pair of jeans seems to be economically responsible. Levi’s can still be picked up for $30. Rock & Republic is making $100 on each pair. By positioning their still-expensive jeans as bargains, they’re going to nab the people who think they’re getting a good deal, while still reinforcing the idea that premium denim demands premium prices.

Luxury is all about aspiration. You aspire to be able to wear (or afford) the labels. The product may or may not be any better than cheaper products, but the idea that you are able to get the more expensive label keeps purchasers coming back. in the case of Rock & Republic, they need to maintain a level of luxury in their goods, and keep the aspriational attainable.

It’s a brilliant response to a poor economy.

Can A New President Change The Economy?

Economics is psychology. As much as the daily rise and fall of stock prices is based in dollars and cents, it’s also based on the idea of how much anything is worth. If you can make people believe that your product has value, they’ll spend more for it. If you can’t, they won’t.

Can a new president change the economy? Can the Audacity of Hope permiate how we all do business with each other?

As our newly inaugurated President Obama begins his administration, we all have the opportunity to do our part to help bring the economy around. Sometimes a new leader is all it takes to remind us that the future is in our hands.

Be a smart marketer. Know what works for your business. Focus and refine your efforts to make sure that every dollar you spend is a dollar that will come back to you.

The change won’t come from just a new President, it will come from all of us working together.

How Taco Bell Can Teach You to Grow Your Business

Lettuce, Tomatoes, Onions, Cheese, Sauce, Tortilla, Beans, Chicken, Steak and Beef.  This simple list of ingredients makes everything found in Taco Bell’s menu. Aside from making you hungry, the reason we mention this is that it shows how recombining your ingredients allows you to offer more products.

It’s called the Taco Bell Product Creation Strategy. Basically, you create new revenue generating products using the source material you already have on hand. John Jantsch talked about this last week at his Duct Tape Marketing blog, Now’s The Time To Repackage Your Products.

Take a moment to look at what you sell. How could you repackage your products to make them easier to sell? By reworking what you already have, you can refine your offering to better serve your customers while still working with your basic ingredients.

It’s another way smart marketers remain successful business owners.

Marketing Trends For 2009 - Why Smart Marketing Matters

Startup Nation sends out this valuable insight into the marketing trends we’re likely to see this coming year.

New Year, New Trends: 20 Marketing Trends for 2009

Important information for the Smart Marketer. As your business moves into the new year, and your customers react to the current economy, watching how these trends play out can help you make smarter marketing decisions.

The trends could be placed in three groups: Messaging, Media and Measurement

Messaging

Recognize that your customers are hurting and that they are looking for economical ways to continue living their lives back before the recession. They want to get more for less. They want to save money. They want you to continue to offer top-notch support, while offering additional services without additional fees. They want to feel comfortable doing business with you, and know that you’re interested in maintaining a relationship with them.

Media

Where your business markets is always important. Focusing on your most likely customers is a start, but also moving into non-traditional advertising venues is important too. When you’re looking to touch as many new customers as possible, you need to reach them where they already visit. Use of online tools, social media, and word of mouth techniques are all going to be important.

Measurement

The most effective messaging created is useless if it isn’t placed in front of an audience that is willing to respond. The best advertising placement is equally useless if the message you’re advertising doesn’t connect with your customers. Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing is the single most valuable move business can make to ensure that you’re spending your marketing budget wisely. When you know what works, your business can focus on the most effective marketing messages and media and stop wasting your time and money on efforts that don’t contribute to growing your business.

Which is where AdSymetrix comes in. We’ve developed our system to help your business understand how your marketing works. Tracking and measuring every response from any ad you place anywhere, online or off. AdSymetrix captures ever step of the process, and provides your business with incredibly valuable information that you can use to make smarter marketing decisions.

Because the most important trend of 2009 needs to be that your business is spending less money to make more money than it did in 2008.

Prioritize Your Marketing - Beat The Recession

Have you heard the phrase “Paradox of Thrift”? It’s an idea that comes out whenever there’s a downturn in the economy. The basic idea is that when the economy turns for the worse, people decide to become more thrifty, to save more of their money and spend less on everything. While this seems like solid, common sense advice, it creates a bigger problem. If your family decides to spend less money, you’ll end up with more in the bank. But that decision means that other people will earn less money. And that’s where the problem starts to snowball. As more people decide to opt out of buying things, businesses are unable to sell things, and the economy slows ever further.

The paradox of thrift shows that while it makes some sense to spend wisely, ultimately it’s as hurtful to not buy as to buy extravagantly. If no one is buying, no one is selling, and the economy comes to a halt.

How can your business react?

• Find ways to excite your potential customers about your products and services to get them to break through the idea that they can live without your business.
• Make sure that you follow the principles of smart marketing: namely that know what works for your business and only spend money on marketing that drives growth.
• Upgrade your customer service. The more comfortable people are doing business with you, the more likely they’ll be to continue doing business with you
• Maintain a positive attitude. Optimism is contagious. There’s a reason you know that FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” is because it is wise advice. If you stay positive, you’ll find opportunities.

When you prioritize your marketing, care for your customers, maintain a positive attitude and know what works, you are creating a business that will withstand this terrible economy.

Principles of Smart Marketing

AdSymetrix was founded on one simple idea: Advertising is too important to be so confusing.

We believe that when you know what works, you can make smarter marketing decisions. Our products and services have been created with that concept in mind. Our response tracking, click, call, chat tracking, easy to understand dashboard, advanced telephone functionality and marketing systems play directly into this idea. Know what works, focus your efforts, save time and money.
We call this Smart Marketing. You’re actively going after just the right customer is who most likely to do business with you. You’re approaching people in a way that makes them eager to respond. You’re not continuing to do the things you’ve always done, just because you’ve always done them. Every step along your marketing plan is tested. Ever decision is verified and every response is captured.

When you know how the money you’re spending on marketing is working, you know where your marketing plan needs to be revised. You know what works, you can make smart marketing decisions.

AdSymetrix can help your company save money, waste less time and make more sales.

Rick Rochon on Online Branding

AdSymetrix believes in advertising. We believe in your ability to affect your bottom line through communicating directly to your potential customers. We’re always on the look out for great ideas and good advice that could help you grow your business.

Rick Rochon, one of our founders and CEO, has been running a seminar in San Francisco about how technologies like Twitter can help you promote your online brand. Instead of grabbing the next plane to California, grab a new cup of coffee - and your notebook - and sit in on a recently conducted seminar Rick conducted that’s been shared through YouTube.

Rick Rochon on Online Branding

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Huff Post: Newspapers - Shut ‘Em Down

James Moore writes today in The Huffington Post about problems in the newspaper industry. We’ve posted the comment below:

Newspapers are more than the paper they’re printed on. The paper is the conduit, a delivery mechanism for the writing inside. Replace the conduit, evolve the content.

But the issue isn’t the writing, it’s the advertising. Newspapers need to look at the value they’re delivering to advertisers. They need a new model that gives advertisers proof that advertising in their paper works.

A full page ad in a newspaper costs thousands of dollars for a single run. That same amount of money could buy dozens of ads in hundreds of places online. If the newspapers want to maintain their value in the eyes of their advertisers, they need to prove their worth.

That’s where Response Measurement comes in. If newspapers offer response tracking and monitoring tools to their advertisers, it would be easy to show the value of their audience.

I talk to businesses every day that are trying to prioritize their marketing, place their ads in the most effective locations, and make smart marketing decisions. AdSymetrix, ( http://www.adsymetrix.com ) is working with publishers, advertisers and agencies to show how tracking and monitoring the responses to any ad placed anywhere can help make smarter marketing decisions. If as a newspaper you show all the responses generated from any ad in any edition you show the value of advertising in your publication.

If the newspapers prove they are an effective vehicle for advertisers, the revenue they’ll generate will help solve their problems.

How Focus Can Keep Your Business In Business

A new year always brings out the thoughts of new beginnings. New ideas, new technologies, new ways of communicating. For a business like yours, it’s easy to look at the new as the solution for finding a way through this mess of an economy.

But the new isn’t what matters as much as the how.

Meet Hathaway Stamp and Identification, a business that for the past 107 years has succeeded by focusing on what they do best: making, marketing and selling hand stamps to businesses of all sizes. Their product is not new. For the past century the same basic product has been produced, by hand, with little fanfare. You could look at their stamps and wonder why businesses care to work with Hathaway. Why not forego using a stamp and just jot a note on a piece of paper that goes past your desk. But the company has continued to focus their business on the needs of their clients for the last century, and in that you can learn something valuable.

Focus your business on what you can do for your customer better than anyone else. Focus your marketing on telling the story of how your business can help your customer better than anyone else. Focus your advertising on only placing ads that work to tell your potential customer why you can help them better than anyone else. Focus and you’ll find that your business will thrive.
Think about the core of your business. The thing that you do that keeps people coming back. That thing is the most valuable asset your company owns. By maintaining your focus on your core product, your core service, you’ll be able to refine the way you cater to your customers’ needs. And by focusing your marketing and advertising on messages and placements that work, you’ll connect with people who are most likely to agree with you, and become long-time customers.

When you focus, you can turn away from the things that waste your time and money. When you know what marketing messaging works, you can stop using the marketing messages that only take up space. When you know what advertising works, you can only spend your budget in places that do work.

Focusing your business is the best way to make sure that by the time this economy turns around, your customers will still be able to do business with you.

And of course, AdSymetrix can help. Our system gives you the tools and information you need to make these kinds of smart marketing decisions. You will know what works, you will know what doesn’t and you’ll be able to make the changes necessary to focus your business and its success. Give it a try, Sign Up today

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