What's your best marketing tip?

[peterjhale]

Marketing can be tough

Get and keeping customers is really tough

So what is your best marketing tip?

Mine is customer service.

I have found that if I treat any customer with the utmost respect and answer all questions quickly and efficiently (and go the extra mile if necessary) I get loads of recommendations.

OK, this is a slow process, but for the longer term incredibly powerful

Any other useful tips that have worked for you ?

[Cougar]

Peter, I agree with you about customer service as paramount.

What follows from this is being abel to ask for referrals, introductions and recommendations.

The other tip (or rather experience of mine) follows on again... that is networking/network marketing. For me, introductions and building up a network contacts is more valuable in growing business than passive advertising - the value of the latter in my field I am quite dubious about.

Interested to hear other ideas/views.

[BIZAL]

Sign up to our new bi monthly news letter!!! This provides specific tips for specific issues on sales & marketing.

[inbakumar]

I agree with Peter and Cougar.

However, in my view successful marketing involves much more than excellent customer service. To be successful you will need the right combination of the following (4P + S):

- Right product
- Right price
- Right place
- Right promotion and
- Right service

I am sure you would agree, generally speaking, that if your price is high then it would be difficult to sell on the internet no matter how good your service is.

This is an interesting topic and hope we can have a lively discussion on it .

Regards,

[ARTzWeb.net]

Personally I think that the best form of marketing is word of mouth. The biggest and most illustrative example of such form of marketing is Google!

They've grown from nothing into the no1 search engine within a few years. I have never seen a google advertisement on the web before they became big. Many users came to use Google because of it's unique search results. Coming back to customer service Peter has said, it is one of the things that can help spread the word out for the service/product you provide.

[davidhorn]

My best marketing tip relates to copy writing:

"Don't tell me about your grass seed, tell me about my lawn!"

People don't want to know how great your product is, they want to know how great your product will impact on them. Focus on writing for the customer, rather than for yourselves.

[BIZAL]

Ok we have been tempted to write a slightly better reply than our visit our website pitch due to some of the comments raised

Re

Right product
- Right price
- Right place
- Right promotion and
- Right service

Sorry but price is irrelevant and has never been the number 1 reason anyone has bought anything ever!!!!

People buy on need, greed, necessity and perceived value. That’s why even when buying online you do not buy from china due to hassle factor.

As for service again it is perceived service that is vital not how good you actually i.e. remember beta-max, word perfect etc?

Re best tips this needs to be narrowed down before a best so-called tip can be provided due to the obviously very large topic being discussed covered. Oh and remember that only doing 1 small part of the sales and marketing cycle is pointless and will not provide you with a successful sales and marketing solution. If life was that easy every company would have more business than n it could cope with!!!

[Corabar Entertainment]

Originally Posted by BIZAL

Sorry but price is irrelevant and has never been the number 1 reason anyone has bought anything ever!!!!

Sorry, but I must disagree with this statement - it is the No1 factor for many people - or it certainly seems so in our business (mobile discos). I wish I had a £ for every time I have answered the phone and the only question from the potential customer is "How Much". They are not interested in the standard of the service you supply, or whether you are complying with safety and legal requirements, etc. I think that this possibly stems from the fact that so many people believe they could do the job and that there are no special skills involved; whereas in reality this could not be further from the truth!

These problems are why there are so many 'cowboys' out there, and they are the reason that our industry has such a bad name. They do not comply with requirements, have inferior equipment, and are not capable of providing a good service, making sure that the client and all the guests enjoy the evening - that's if they turn up at all. Again, I wish I had a £ for every call I have had saying that their DJ had let them down, asking how much we charge, and then complain that it is so much more than they were going to pay the other DJ (to which I point out that their DJ is not even turning up!)

Anyway, apologies for the 'rant', and having said all that, there are enough people out there (thankfully) for which quality of service and value for money are more important than 'cheapest' - but I am certainly not convinced that it is the majority.

Angela

[BIZAL]

Ok lets disprove your theory.
Would anyone buy this service if:

1: the records played no one had ever herd of?
2: If the DG was late there would be no compensation?
3: If they used unprofessional language? (this actually happened to me on my Grans Golden anniversary.
4: If they asked for full payment in advance rather than after it had been delivered.
5: If you were looking for a certain style of music and they could not provide it?.
6: If they are based a long way away?
7:If the person you were talking to sounded like a con man?

Would you also not pay the extra £50.00 to use someone who addressed all your concerns and who you got on with, or would you save the money and go with the person who sounded like he had never done it before, would try and sleep with you mum, not turn up and wanted all the money up front.

Sorry but it is your understanding of selling that makes you say such things.

If what you are looking at/for does meet your requirements it does not matter how cheap it is.

So Corabar change your Elavotor pitch!!!

[peterjhale]

Price is the #1 factor when you have a commodity business - have a look at the adverts when price is the biggest selling point (eg: airlines for economy travel)

If someone phones you up and says "how much" you need to go into a sale pitch first - otherwise they don't know what they're getting at all