Harnessing The Power Of The Internet

In these trying economic times are you wondering if you’ll be able to stay in business?

I remember, back in the late 80′s, my husband and I owned a small limousine business.  I say small because we owned one limousine while many of our competitors owned fleets of four to eight cars.

Throughout the 80′s, limousine services were all the rave.  Business was booming.  We catered to singers, actors, , business tycoons, as well as the local wedding, funeral, prom, and graduation.

Somewhere around 1995 or so, the limousine industry took a nose dive.  Suddenly the market was no longer there.  A trend that was once big, gawdy and flashy, turned low-key and conservative.  Instead of limousines, sedans and suvs became the ground transportation of choice.

Larger limousine companies, struggled to survive on side services such as vehicle detailing and stereo and alarm installation.  We smaller companies, however, eventually had to shut down and find another industry.

Although we both recognized the inevitable, it was difficult for my husband to accept defeat.  We had started this company from the ground up.  It was drenched with our blood, sweat and tears.

I remember days of juggling babies, dishes, laundry and cleaning the limousine while he slept, and nights of answering the phone and booking runs while he drove all night.  That business was who we were and to fail was heartbreaking-but what can you do when a whole market turns against you?

Well these days, there is a lot that can be done to recession-proof a business.

Thanks to the Internet and a myriad of inexpensive marketing strategies, most businesses today can avoid failure in spite of our economic downturn.

So what exactly can you do to recession-proof your business?

1.  Capture and market to you current customer base.

You have people who buy from you on a regular basis.  What are you doing now to stay in contact with them?  If you are not staying in contact with them, you are leaving profits on the table.  Plus, if you are buying expensive yellow page or newspaper ads, you are throwing money away.  You must establish a data base, a list of buyers that you can market to over and over.

2.  Set up a website or blog with an opt-in box on the main page, or add and opt-in box to your existing site.

You will need this to do step one.  Here’s the strategy:

Once you have the site set up, call your merchant account customer service number and have them walk you through the steps to change the header on your receipts.  Change it to read like this:

We appreciate your business!  For preferred customer discounts and coupons go to “www.yourwebsite.com”  it’s FREE!

Most everyone looks at their receipt.  Most everyone wants preferred discounts.  They’ll go to your site, fill in the form and end up on your list.  You can add several buyers to your list every day which will add revenues to your business.  Remember, these are people who have bought from you before, they know you, they like you, they trust you.  They are a warm market.

3.  Use email marketing to cut advertising costs.

Once you have this list of buyers you can forever say goodby to $4,000 full-page yellow page ads and $2,000 newspaper ads that don’t even work.  For the cost of an autoresponder account, $15-30 per month, you can send whatever and promotion you want as often as you want.

You can use email marketing to get people coming back into your store more often and buying more products.  It won’t cost you anything to send an email with a buy one, get one free offer, and once they’re in your store, like most people, they’ll end up buying other things as well.  You can not get those kind of results with conventional advertising methods.

Let’s say you have done steps one and two.  Over time, you have accumulated 500 buyers on your list.  You decide to put together a short report on ten frequently asked questions from your customers.  You send an email offering this report for $1.  Suppose only half of them buy it?  You just made $250 without spending a dime on advertising-all profit-and no one even came in to your store.  The possibilities are endless.

In Internet marketing everyone knows “The money is in the list.” Most offline business owners don’t realize that this is every bit as critical for them, particularly these days.  In a time when new business is scarce, an existing data base of repeat buyers is a necessity, a goldmine.

If your business is struggling, even if it’s not struggling, I encourage you to implement the three steps above.  You’ll be glad you did.

If you would like to learn more strategies to recession-proof your business, simply fill in the form above to receive our ten part series, “Harnessing the Power of the Internet”.

If you need help implementing these or other strategies, contact us to arrange one-on-one consulting.

If you will be in the Anchorage area and would like to attend one of our workshops, “Harnessing the Power of the Internet”, contact us for dates and times.

Cherilynn Stone
E-Commerce Business Consultant
www.ezonlinemarketing.net
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