Over the past 10 years, most of the small business clients I have met, spend a great deal of time worrying about their competition. While I totally understand this mindset and focus. The reality for most small businesses is not competing against another business, but rather fighting to be remembered when your customers need you. Your real enemy is staying “Top of Mind” for your clients.
My mom was one of 10 kids, I have tons of first and second cousins in a very large family. I am active in my church and know personally hundreds of people in my school board volunteer work. Nevertheless, not a month goes by where I hear the phrase that makes you cringe. “Oh Fred, I totally forgot you are in the website business, I just paid X to have my site redone with Y.”
I believe with all my heart that my family, my friends, my peers, and even my local community wants to do business with me (and many of them do), but how do you stay top of mind? How do make people remember what your service is when they need it?
1. You Got to Tell People What You Do, ALL the Time
Joe Girard author of How to Sell Anything to Anybody and world record holder for the most cars sold, would give out a box of 500 business cards EVERY week. People didn’t buy cars from him because he was the best salesman per se, they bought cars from him because he reminded them.
2. Email Your Clients Weekly to Stay Top of Mind
People hate email. People hate spam. I hear complaints all the time about people getting too much email. While you may consider email old school, it still works and is easier than ever to use. You can create a MailChimp account for free and use their templates to send out a blast once a week. Remind your existing customers what you do and any add-on specials you may have.
3. Consider Postcards
Joe Girard would mail out a personal postcard to every person he sold to every month, every year that he was a car salesman. Do you think those postcards worked? People would wait in line for hours to have him sell them a car.
4. Ask for Referrals
Assuming you sell a good product or provide a great service, consider asking your base for referrals. People like buying from people and people are more likely to buy when someone else recommends them. This is the entire concept of sales on Amazon.
5. Remind Your Base About Other Products or Services
Customers tend to remember you for the first product they bought from you. Not necessarily other services you off. For example, I’ve rented a bouncy house before from a local company. I tend to think that is the ONLY service they provide. When in truth they rent tables, chairs, a banquet hall, plates, and flatware. I only remember them as a “bouncy house company.”
6. Follow & Market on Social Media to Stay Top of Mind
One of the easiest ways to stay “Top of Mind” is to actually tweek, post, share, video story, Like, Follow your clients on social media. We are way past the time when businesses should be considering social media. Social media is not part of your daily marketing to remind clients and future customers about your product and service offering. Go share, go follow, go educate.
7. Call and Follow-Up with Clients
This sounds so simple and yet businesses rarely do it. Call and check-in. What I have found is employees move, needs change, and opportunities abound. You may think about your products all the time, but trust me, your customers and clients don’t. Take initiative, call and see what you can do to help your clients–even if it is not in your field of service.
Staying top of mind is important. Being top of mind is relevant. Staying top of mind will help you grow your business.
Let me know how we can help. Call us at 817.247.6003, we can help with MailChimp and social media to stay “top of mind.”