Do you send handwritten seasonal greetings to your clients?

It may sound to be very simple, regular stuff.  But it is surprising that still a large percentage of small businesses fail to use such an opportunity to strengthen their relationship with their clients on a personal level. And when I casually asked some of the culprits about the big problem that restricts them from acknowledging their clients, this is their surprising relevation:

• It is about time. Or shall I say (as I understand), mismanagement of time, since clients are the purpose of the business!
• Procastination. Almost every culprit claimed that he thought (I am really not sure if he is being truthful), but kept procastination and in no time the festive season was over.

But, if you are doing this, you are missing out on a great opportunity to make a personal contact with the "core of your business (i.e. your clients)" and saying them "Thank you" for the business they have given you. Not only it makes them feel special, it keeps you on top of their mind at all times, which can lead to more word-of-mouth and references.

But, its never late.
I will recommend that you:

• Plan out a small budget and some time for your special customers. BTW, if you can do it for all your customers, then go ahead and do it.
• Create a mailing list of all customers whom you wish to delight. Sign greeting cards personally. Do it much before the festive season (so that you do not forget this due to the big conference). Despatch them at the right time (or else have someone responsible for sending over these greetings on time).
• If your budget permits to spend 0.25% - 0.50% (I generally do spend this much) of your annual turnover, do send over seasonal gifts, sweets and wine to your special customers! You do not need to buy something very expensive. Just get across something special, which makes the day for your client and his family.

It makes your clients feel special and they remember you more often. And if they remember you more often, you get more business. Because timely recall and top-of-the-mind position will be the difference between you getting a deal over your competitor when the credentials, pricing and quality of service / product stands neck-to-neck.

The bids on AdWords are soaring to new heights everyday. Some advertisers are even shelling out up to $10 per click. So, naturally the question arises - Is this complete madness or is there any logic behind such aggressive advertising?

To me, it does make some sense to bid aggressively if you have the right strategy in place. These are two scenarios you can consider:

1) Every client you acquire, on an average spends $12000 with you in a year. In this case, you do not mind spending 10% of the revenue as customer acquisition cost. Therefore you can comfortably bid $10 per click (provided you have a site which can convert 1 out of 120 visitors). Thus, looking at a lifetime value of a customer makes it a good investment.

2) If you have mastered the art of persuasion (or have hired a master of persuasion), and have come up with a website with converts well (visitor > customer conversion), every visitor you are driving to your website is equivalent to revenue . So go ahead, rock the boat and bid out all your competitors. You will get more customers and will also have lower customer acquisition cost. What more do you want?

So, expensive keywords bidding do work, if they are backed with high lifetime customer value and/or higher conversion on the website. And yes, those Internet marketing experts are not insane! In fact most of them are very smart.

So bid smartly!

It is a true incident about, how a cookie shop messed up its sales!

CookieMan is a fast growing cookie brand in India. They have a small outlet at Chennai airport. Till recently, before boarding the flight, I used to buy some delicious cookies from that outlet to keep myself indulged for the evening.

Now, the real shocker! On my recent visit to Chennai, the store guy told me - "that the minimum you can purchase is 250 grams!"

I could not help, but smile at this "strategic" move of the company!

This is how they are messing up their own marketing:

• They are losing an opportunity to connect with their consumers and wow them! An airport lounge can be the best place to get into their minds.
• They are missing an opportunity to identify which product has high shelf-appeal. In fact, they can utilize this opportunity to implement interesting means to do market survey among the middle and upper-middle class of consumers who will be the most frequent buyers of such confectionaries.
• Above all, they are losing sales.

I fail to understand the reason. The only obvious reason that come to my mind:

• They were trying to reduce the work load of their sales guy (Who was sitting idle!)
• They were not interested in consumers who buy less than 250 grams. (Unfortunately, trust is won one step at a time. In fact some of the biggest customers of Indus Net Technologies initially signed up for a simple logo design service and then they kept increasing their exposure with us. Targeting for large sale does work, but nothing works like small experiences that builds relationship one step at a time.)

Besides fixing the obvious issue, this is what they could have done (some random ideas):

• Put a mail-order form and hand it over with every money receipt they give out. Most travelers who experience the cookies might like to mail-order the cookie (in fact on a subscription basis - every month). This can give them an opportunity to sell in decent quantities every month.
• Put a "self help" literature on "history of cookies" & "interesting combos". Indians like to eat in combination (mostly). When people have leisure time at an airport lounge, it is best to make them interested in the product (if not the brand).

And I hope you never repeat this mistake in your business. Give your prospects to try yourself out, one step at a time. Give them great experiences and build relationship one step at a time. They last longer.

BTW, if you have more ideas for them, do contribute. I will update my post with your input.

Business organizations can never be in equilibrium or achieve stable position. Either they are moving up or they are moving down, depending upon their innovation quotient. 

If you are trying to keep things stable, they won’t remain so. You will slowly slide down simply because:

• there is no exclusivity,
• competition will catch up on the technology front and -
  • either cut price - if they too are not innovating (resulting in your margins to shrink)
  • or innovate and better the product - if they want to add value to the product and move up the value chain (resulting in your market share to shrink)

And if you continuously innovate and apply new ideas (refer to my post on manufacturing ideas), you will continue to move up.

It is unfortunate that in some cases, the entire industry decides to stabilize their position and take customer wants for granted. For example, consider:

• radio manufacturers,
• alarm clock manufacturers,
• camera manufacturers (there are some really big names out there)

They decided to stay at their position and were swept away by mobile companies like Nokia (who is the largest digital camera manufacturer in the world today). They decided to experiment and give more to their customers by integrating digital camera in mobile phones (possibly the thought process was that mobile, camera, clock, alarm are all things that need to be handy). It took some time to gather market acceptance which was created by the initial hype, but later on sustained due to the instant-in-the-hand value of the additional gadgets.

Seth Godin has highlighted how alarm clock manufacturers can still make a small change in their product and make it stand out. These are simple improvements which can make a product stand out and desirable!

Are you moving up or moving down?

I came across this quote today at BusinessPundit. 

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. - Kenji Miyazawa

How true When you start a company, you get rejected by almost everyone:

Bankers:

They want to lend you money only if you have a strong financial background. Ever thought, why will you even go for borrowing money if you have that solid financial backing!

Customers:

Have you heard prospects saying - You dont have enough credentials! Its a chicken and egg situation. You got to get few customers to build credentials. But to get customers, you need credentials.

Employees:

Have you heard people saying - I don’t see a future in your company. I would prefer to work for an established brand. Have you ever thought that "established brand" was also built by some "go getters" who came out of their comfort zone and took risk to build the "established brand".

I don’t want to rant about the pain. Just want to let you know that everyone faces this. Only those people, who use it as a fuel for their journey succeeds. Those who give up results in those 80% of the businesses that dies within the first few years of operations!

Keep going!