The eternal question for all business owners...
By Elias Ek

No entrepreneur would start a business if it was impossible to reach their customers in a profitable manner, but sometimes it feels like an equation without a solution, a classic Catch-22 where you need money to get customers but you can only get money from customers. How to do?

There are many ways to reach customers and each company has to find the best mix for them depending on industry, selling points, budget etc.

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The ground work has to be in developing your CIS system. While big companies spend millions on this it doesn't have to be that complicated. It is easy and not very expensive to simply make sure that your website, business card, brochures and other materials all use the same logo's, colors and fonts. This ensures that you maximize the return on other marketing expenditures since your customers will easier get to know your company. Its hard enough to get a customer to know one logo, imagine if all your materials use different logos or different versions, its like you are trying to market several companies on one budget. Don't waste your money; spend some on your CIS. Enspyre has had customers that have gotten a full set of materials for as little as 30,000. Oh, and a bonus point is to ALWAYS get someone with perfect English skills to look over your international sales materials. Too many companies are out there trying to sell their products with materials that make people chuckle?

Once the CIS is in place its time to start "reaching out" to the customers:

Telemarketing
Of course I am a bit partial since my company offer telemarketing as a service, but telemarketing is effective for many types of products and services. Keep in mind that telemarketing is never as better than the list you use. You have to have good lists otherwise it won't work.

Some very important keywords would be "Targeted and Polite" - in that order. Everybody hates to get calls, pop-up banners or even TV-commercials for products that we have absolutely no interest or need for. But if you were just about to catch the MRT and realized that you had forgotten to bring your facial mask, you wouldn't mind someone coming up and asking if you needed to buy one, would you?
So the telemarketer's most important task is to use a list of people that are likely interested in your products or services. This of course will also increase your chance of getting sales which decreases your costs etc?

Once you have a list of people that is likely to be interested in buying your stuff, it's important to be polite and professional. And don't forget to be passionate. If you are not excited about the quality and usability of what you sell, why should they?

If someone is clearly not interested or maybe even rude, thank them politely and end the call. Staying on trying to sell them will not only make the person angry, the chance to make a sale is so low that it doesn't offset the time spent.

My experience is that overwhelmingly, if the list is good and the telemarketer is polite and passionate, people will not mind the call. Even if they might not want to buy themselves they sometimes gives referrals to people who do, and that is always nice.

DM send-out
Sending snail mail send-outs most often have a a very low ROI. Add to that the ecological concerns with putting out tens of thousands of pieces of paper that most likely will end up on the landfills, and its not that great of a promotion. If you are going to do it, make sure you have lists with phone number as well so you can follow up per phone. This can vastly improve the efficiency and actually make the total investment worthwhile. Generally speaking more expensive items with higher margin lends itself to this combination.

E-mail marketing
E-mail marketing has been a hot topic for the last few years and most people probably equate e-mail marketing with SPAM which is not necessarily the case.

Having an e-mail newsletter that helps you keep contact with current and potential customers is also e-mail marketing. Make sure to only send to people that don't mind and to stop sending to people that tell you they don't want it anymore.

Internet advertising
When buying traditional advertising (TV, radio, print, and Internet banners) the client can never really know the ROI. It takes expensive surveys and promotional gimmicks to try to estimate if a specific ad is generating income. Pay-For-Click advertising on the other hand is extremely targeted and with total transparency. The search engine Google (www.google.com) and advertising network Overture (www.overture.com) are the best known players in this field.

The trick is to figure out the target keywords and ads that will bring in visitors that are specifically interested in the client's products.

The great thing with Google is that you can set an initial daily budget as low as USD1 and increase it as the results have proven itself. Google advertising is extremely transparent. You can easily see how many people see the ads, click on them and how much it costs. Then we can compare that with the number of people that come to the website and how many contact us. It takes a bit of time and effort to really figure out how it works but it is usually worth it.

The negative part here is that Overture currently only offers their services in a few countries, and Taiwan is not one of them so they are only . On Google you can advertise all over the world including Taiwan, and while the ads certainly can be in Chinese, the management system is only in English. But the benefits outweigh the trouble, making this one of the most efficient marketing techniques ever.

Do you have comments, suggestions or tips? Send them to us!