Product Enhancement/Making a Purple Cow - Can you make a small change to your product or service that will greatly enhance its benefits? Start a dialogue with your customers through a blog, a survey or an online bulletin board. Ask them what could be changed to make your product or service even better. Small changes are just as powerful, if not more so, than large ones.
Strengthen Your Brand Identity – Is your brand identity or logo living up to your company’s personality? If not, then maybe it’s time to refresh your brand identity to realign your business with your marketing objectives.
Different Markets – Think “out of the box”. Can you market your product or service to customers that traditionally aren’t part of your marketplace? For example, would your dog treats sell better in a natural grocery store as opposed to pet boutiques? The shelves in the pet section are less crowded in natural product stores than in most pet stores.
Public Relations – Larger companies with fatter advertising budgets use today’s economy as a means of carving out market share for their products. PR is a great way to level the playing field, and usually costs less per lead than advertising. Press releases, product reviews and feature stories all lend credibility to your business since they are written by unbiased third parties.
Web site Enhancement – You’re Web site should be enhanced with tags and descriptions in order for the search engines and customers to find you. Also, take a look at your site navigation. Is it easy for the user to navigate through your site? Do you have a method of funneling prospects through your site? Is your Web copy relevant to your audience? You don’t want to lose a prospect to a bad user experience and sour navigation.
Referral Program – Reward customers who refer other clients to you with a discount or small personal item that is useful to them. Customers like to save money, but also appreciate appropriate small gifts. For example, one of my clients just had a baby and I sent them a card with a baby rattle. The gift was well received and I connected with my client on a personal level.
Multiple Customer Touchpoints – You may discover that 80% of all your sales come from only 20% of your customer base. It is this 20% that you can easily persuade to purchase from you again. The best method of obtaining this “mind share” is to steadily make contact with your customers through a postcard campaign, an eMail newsletter or a phone call. The more times you connect with your customer, the better.
About the Author
Dara is a brand identity and marketing design strategist at 7 Lucky Dogs, a leading consultancy in marketing to “pet parents”. Through customized marketing and brand identity packages, 7 Lucky Dogs helps you discover what makes your company, product or service different from your competitors. We then translate this differentiation visually into a logo, product packaging, an E-commerce site and promotional materials to reflect those unique attributes. We make our clients look credible and memorable to their prospects while they increase their bottom line. As the owner of 7 Lucky Dogs, Dara is passionate about helping independent pet businesses stand out in front of their competitors and attract more clients. She blends business smarts with creativity with over ten years of design experience with formal education in both graphic design and marketing.
