"The men who try to do something and fail
are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed."

This tip continues on with the remaining four marketing principles that hardly any business is following. This time, we'll cover the principles 5 through 8.

Marketing Principle No. 5. Know Your Selling Advantage.

You may know this as your USP (unique selling proposition) or UCA (unique competitive advantage), but I prefer USA (unique selling advantage). Because whatever business you own you are trying to sell something - product or service. And, it's an advantage you have now! Not something you propose to have.

What is your USA?

Your USA is the reason I should buy from you and not so and so down the road.

It is the one, two or six reasons I should buy from you. It is your advantage over your competition.

You may be more experienced, or have cheaper prices. You might use the latest and newest equipment, or have a unique guarantee. Your product may last longer, or be used by someone famous.

Whatever it is, it's your unique selling advantage. It's the reason I should buy from you instead of going to someone else. And, once you have your USA worked out, use it in all of your sales material and promotions. Let everyone know WHY they should come to you.

Marketing Principle No. 6. Mail Your Customers.

Research shows that it is up to 7 times easier and cheaper to sell something to an existing customer than getting someone to buy who is not your customer.

So if you're not marketing to your existing customers you are spending up to 7 times more money than you have to.

What's the easiest way to market to your existing customers?

Well, the easiest way to market to your existing customers is to send them a promotion in the mail.

You could offer them a free $10 gift voucher, or a small gift. Whatever the offer, you must design it to bring the customer back into the store, or encourage them to use your service again.

ALL businesses can benefit from mailing their customers again and making them NEW offers.

You'll probably make more money from mailing your customers than you did with the first sale. Because they'll keep coming back and spending money with you over and over again.

Marketing Principle No. 7. Test Everything.

Everything you do should be tested. There are NO exceptions.

You should test your prices, your offers, the way you greet people, the purfume or deodorant you wear, how you dress, how the shop looks (ask your customers opinions), your guarantees, who you market to, headlines, ads, where the ad appears, everything!

The list could go on and on.

Perhaps the first thing you should test is your selling price. You should put your prices up. Now before you get all hot and bothered and start telling me you'll lose sales and no-body will buy, why don't you test it and see?

What would happen if you put your prices up but still got the same number of sales?

Let me give you an example. A restaurant owner came to see me to help her increase her profits from her restaurant. One of the things I told her was to put up her prices.

She was charging from $10.50 to $19.50 for a main meal. The interesting thing was that everything on the menu ended in 50 cents. She was reluctant to raise her prices too much, so I told her to raise the price of everything by 40 cents.

Now 40 cents isn't a large price rise at all. But when you spread it out over the week you get a better picture. Her average week was 250 people. If they only buy one meal she makes an extra $100. But most people bought at least two meals (entree or desert plus a main), and some bought three. So she actually made over $200 a week more (that's over $10,000 a year) just by raising her price on everything by 40 cents. But you know what the best part is? It didn't cost her any extra to make that extra money. How easy was that?

A 10% or a 5% across the board price rise doesn't sound much, but it could make the difference between your business surviving, or struggling to make ends meet and becoming another statistic.

But you won't know unless you TEST!

By testing you will very quickly discover the prices the market will hold, and which offers will bring back the best results. You can then use the best offer to ALL of your customers and make a killing!!!

Marketing Principle No. 8. Monitor ALL your ads, letters and other promotions.

You should monitor ALL of your advertising and promotions.

This way you will know whether or not they are working.

The strength of all marketing is monitoring. Because . . .

Then you can concentrate your marketing on that. And you'll save heaps of money as well, because you'll only spend up big on the marketing that you know works.

To monitor your marketing re-read the marketing tip I did called "How To Double Your Business Within 6 Months" or grab yourself a copy of the (note: The following web site seems to be shut down permanently or temporily. I'm sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause you) .au/~miros/promotionanalyzer.htm">Promotion Analyzer.

All you need to remember is . . .

When you start to monitor and only use what works your business will forge ahead in leaps and bounds. In fact it's not uncommon for businesses to virtually DOUBLE overnight because of monitoring.

So there you have it. The 8 Marketing Principles that hardly any business is using.

Phew, I'm all written out. I'll leave you know to put this information to work and let it make you more money.

Try this, it works!

May the success you achieve be a direct result of the effort you put in!!

Michael Ross
Miros Designs Marketing.
 
 

About this author

Michael Ross is an australian based author, product developer, direct marketer and consultant.

Michael Ross is known for his detailed and helpful advice on how to succeed in marketing.

Note:
Michael Ross' original web site is closed. I don't know if it's permanently or temporily. Michael Ross recently told me that he has more or less retired from the Internet. I'm sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause you.

You can, however, still buy a copy of Micael's book, "The Art of Leverage" by going to this web site: http://artofleverage.cjb.net/