Volume #19

Five Unusual Marketing Strategies...

‘Make everything as simple as possible,
but not simpler.’ Albert Einstein

Unusual Marketing Strategy One:

Capture more incoming phone enquiries

A few months ago I was working with a client who provides personalised answering services for a wide range of businesses.

As part of my work I helped them to collect a large number of amazing testimonials from some of their best customers.

One testimonial in particular caught my eye.

Here is what it said...

This testimonial  pointed out something very obvious...

Most people don’t like to leave a message on an answering machine or voice mail. They would much rather talk to a real live person. If they can’t get a live person they will often hang up and not leave a message.

(Which means there is a good chance they will probably ring one of your competitors who offers a similar product or service.)

So what’s my marketing recommendation here?

It’s pretty simple. Just answer this question...

Do a number of potential clients and customer phone your business and have to leave their details on voice mail or an answering machine?

If you answer is ‘yes’, then test using a professional answering service for 2-3 months to see it can make a noticeable difference to your sales results.

Capturing more incoming phone enquiries will (in most cases) more than pay for using the services of this professional answering service. And produce a nice profit on top of this.

You may like to check out the firm I worked with to see if they can help you.

www.amundson.co.nz

They are outstanding and have clients in many parts of the world. And your investment to use them for a few months is under a thousand dollars.

You can also email the owner of this firm, Justine Amundson on if you have any questions on what they do.

Unusual Marketing Strategy Two:

Professionally raise your prices

This is a controversial recommendation for many businesses. However when you do it properly you will be amazed at how well this one strategy can work for you.

I first discovered the value of professionally raising my prices around 19 years ago when I began speaking on sales and marketing to various business groups.

For the first six months I charged $300 an hour for my talks and even though I was very busy, I wasn’t making much money. I had preparation time, travel time and all this meant I was working long hours for a small return.

So I asked one of the most successful business speakers in the country for some advice. He said ‘Graham, you need to increase your prices and package what you offer in a different way.’ He gave me four simple steps to do this. In the next two months I made an extra $16,000 in speaking fees from following his advice.

And best of all my clients were very happy to pay my higher prices because of how my speaking services were now packaged.

I discovered it’s not about just raising your prices, it’s also about how you ‘package’ these higher prices at the same time.

One of the best resources I have ever seen on professionally raising prices is

‘The Price Stretching Workshop’

This was created by my good friend and business strategy expert Tom Poland.

Tom has helped over 1,573 business owners from a wide range of industries to improve their sales and profits. A good number of Tom’s clients have used his strategies to make their businesses so profitable they were able to sell them for millions of dollars.

You can learn more about Tom and what he does at www.8020center.com

The good news is that Tom’s ‘Price Stretcher Workshop’ is available in a convenient ‘do it yourself’ format for under a thousand dollars. Tom not only gives a huge number of strategies to raise your prices, he also shows you the psychology of how to do it so your clients are still more than happy to give you their hard earned money.

You can see the full details at this link.

Price Stretcher Workshop

In most cases if you raise your prices professionally two things will happen.

First of all you often make just as many sales as before but at higher profits.

Secondly, you will attract a much better type of client.

Both of these are great outcomes, so professionally raising your prices is well worth looking at.

Unusual Marketing Strategy Three:

Hire a great sales or marketing consultant

A good consultant can often increase your sales and profits and save you a huge amount of time as well.

Here’s a good example...

A number of years ago I hired a marketing consultant called Bob Serling for six months. I paid Bob around $6,000US and he consulted with me by email on any sales and marketing challenges I had. We exchanged around 20-30 emails over six months.

Using the advice from Bob in just a few of his emails, I managed to increase my sales by 91% in less than 90 days. That put an extra $100,000 in my pocket in less than six months so was a great investment.

So the recommendation here is to find a good sales and marketing consultant and hire them for ideas to help you improve your sales and profits.

This is a service I offer a small number of my own clients.

For just under a thousand dollars you could hire me to consult with you by phone for 30 days on any of your sales and marketing challenges. Alternatively you could hire me for a similar amount to consult with you by email for 90 days instead.

Sometimes all you need is one good idea or insight and it can transform your business overnight. And a good sales and marketing consultant is often a good person to provide these ideas and insights for you.

Here’s a good example:

If you like the idea of hiring a good sales and marketing consultant you may like to contact me and get more details on how my email or phone consulting service works.

My email is

Unusual Marketing Strategy Four:

Use a proven sales letter

I love this marketing strategy. It’s so obvious when you think about it, yet less than 5% of businesses actually use it on a regular basis.

The idea here is that you use only proven sales letters in your marketing. In other words you use sales letters that have been proven to be profitable in the past. This means there is a very high chance they will work well again.

Let me give you an interesting example...

I have a client who is a copywriter and he showed me an interesting sales letter he wrote recently for a plumber. This sales letter was sent to five schools at a cost of around $50. (The letter went by courier and had two fun ‘attention grabbers’ with it. These were a single roll of toilet paper and a small spanner.) There was a short email sent to each person at the school before the sales letter was sent by courier. And all 5 people were phoned after the sales letter was sent out.

The end result was $53,000 of brand new plumbing business for the plumber in the first 30 days. Directly from this one sales letter that was sent to only 5 schools.

Now because this sales letter has been proven to work well, there is a very good chance that it will work well again when it is sent out to a new group of schools.

And it will probably work well for another plumber in a different area who wants to get new plumbing work from schools.

Here’s what I’ve noticed in sales and marketing over the last 34 years.

If you want to develop your own super effective sales letters it usually takes you considerable time and effort over a period of time.

You try a lot of different sales letters to finally get just one that works really well.

However if you want a quicker result in a shorter period of time you may want to try a different approach.

In this case you use a proven sales letter that has already produced great results for another business.

You then adapt it to your business and test it.

The odds of it working well are far higher if it has already worked well before.

Here’s a great example:

I have a client in the time management field and I explained that I had a proven sales letter that I was sure would work well for her business.

The sales letter was actually two emails sent out over 48 hours. These two emails had already worked in a dozen other industries. My client agreed to test them in her business and was thrilled with the results...

So what’s the marketing strategy recommendation here?

If you have a business with an easy to contact database of client and prospects, you may want to test using a proven sales letter.

I have a wide range of proven sales letters on hand that potentially could work well in other businesses.

Some of these sales letters are proven to reactivate old customers who have not purchased for a while. Others work well to get prospects to buy for the first time.

My fee for using many of these proven sales letters is an affordable up front retainer (under a thousand dollars) plus a percentage of the new sales and profits these proven sales letters produce when they are used.

Contact me if this is of interest and I’ll let you know if these proven sales letters could be useful for your type of business or not.

My email is graham@twomac.co.nz 

Unusual Marketing Strategy Five:

Implement a ‘raving fans thank you’ strategy with every new sale you make.

This is easily done for under a thousand dollars and can be amazingly effective.

First of all, calculate how much in new sales and profits one delighted client is worth to you over the next 2-3 years.

Let’s say they are worth $1,000.

Then spend a small part of what they are worth to your business in giving them unexpected ‘added value’ that will turn them into a raving fan.

A raving fan client could easily give you two referrals who happily spend money with your business. This means the value of this one new customer instead of being $1,000 could now be worth double or triple this amount.

Here’s a simple way to do this.

1: Send a hand written thank you card to every new person you make a sale to. The message on the thank you card should be something like this...

Hi John/Jane

Thank you very much for investing in our xyz product or service. I know you will be delighted with how well this works for you.

Best wishes. Your name

Less than 2% of customers ever receive a hand written thank you note from any business so that alone will make them feel special.

You can buy blank thank you cards from your local stationery store or card shop.

I personally prefer to have mine printed by a local digital printer for around $1 each.

I have the words thank you printed on the front and my business name and contact details on the back.

If you are based in NZ you may like to contact Imago Print Centre on for samples of the thank you cards they produce.

Imago are very good, I use them myself and recommend them to all my NZ clients.

2: One to two weeks after you have made this sale, send an unexpected free gift to each new client. (This doesn’t have to cost a lot of money; however it should be something they will appreciate.)

For instance you might send them a $5 Instant Scratch and Win lottery ticket where they could potentially win $50,000.

Or perhaps you include a double movie pass if they have made a substantial purchase.

You could send them a small pot plant, a motivational book and so on.

Include a nice note with this gift.

Hi John,

Thanks again for being a client. We really appreciate your business. I’ve enclosed a double movie pass that I thought you might enjoy. (With my compliments.)

Kind regards

Your name.

A small unexpected gift like is also very uncommon and shows the new client that you really do value their business.

3: Then a few days later make a follow up phone call to see how your client is finding the product or service they have invested in.

This call should be brief and friendly.

Hi Jane, it’s Fred here from xyz business. Just a quick call to thank you for your recent investment in our ABC product or service. How are you finding it?

Chat for a moment or two then politely hang up.

4: As soon as you have spoken to the client, send them another handwritten thank you card with a brief message on it.

Hi Jane,

Thanks for your time on the phone today. I appreciate your feedback on your ABC product or service. We appreciate your business.

Kind regards.

Your Name.

Do these four simple steps in the first 30 days, and suddenly you will start to turn many of your normal customers into delighted raving fans.

Your investment is only a small amount of time and money for each client.

And after the first month stay in touch regularly with helpful added value.

(There are many ways to do this and I’ll cover some of them in another message.)

Let me ask you a quick question:

How many businesses have ever used these four steps with you after you have spent your hard earned money with them?

I suspect it’s very few.

This is a great reason to do this in your business.

So set aside $1,000 and use it for some thank you cards and a small gift you then send to each brand new client.

Follow the four steps and then decide once you have used $1,000 if this is a good investment of your marketing money to continue making.

(I think you will be surprised how well this actually works.)

Summary:

In this article I’ve touched on five unusual ways to use a marketing budget of less than a thousand dollars.

I hope you’ve got a few useful ideas and would love to hear your comments and feedback.

You can reach me on

Copyright © 2011 by Graham McGregor All Rights Reserved

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