Category Archives: More Brains Than Bucks

low cost no cost marketing tips for small business

The Perils of ‘Oily Rag’ Thinking

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Positive Marketing Momentum

It is largely unknown or not understood by the new small business person that marketing momentum used positively means that over time you will need to spend less and less on your marketing program.

Marketing has its own momentum. If you stop marketing for two, three or six months, you will have a corresponding soft patch or trough in business sales and enquiries further down the track. How much further down the track and how much effect is largely to do with the location and type of business you have. But ultimately your business will die a slow and agonising death. There is no such thing as a business staying the same – same is death. A business is either growing or it is dying.

Negative Marketing Momentum

For the rocking horse business a stop of all marketing activity for a period of 2-3 weeks would result in a noticeable downturn in business in 2-3 month’s time. Telephone and web enquiries dropped off gradually to a trickle.  Reduced enquiries, reduced business, reduced income and so it goes.

When times get tough, it is instinctive for many small businesses, (and many large businesses) who rely exclusively on paying for their promotion and marketing, to radically curtail or stop spending on marketing and substitute it with  – you guessed it –  nothing. They then wonder why business continues to slow. Their attitude is “Whew! We survived that month with no marketing expenditure, maybe I can get through the next month.” It continues until you are flattened financially with no hope of regaining any momentum because your own and/or your staff’s morale is in tatters on the floor. One of the most important prerequisites to being a good Shoestring Marketer and business person is self-belief – see the 7 P’s of Shoestring Marketing and Poise, so morale is big deal.

When there is an economic downturn, do not assume that “better” economic times are around the corner and you can run the business on the smell of an oily rag until it picks up. In the last few years the economy has slowed, and slowed, and slowed. It slows, then it slows some more and you’re still in “oily rag” mode, working impossible hours making less money. You don’t have the energy, time or inclination to work “on” the business because you’re so buried “in” the business. It’s a recipe for self-destruction.

Managing Supply & Demand through Marketing Momentum

Rule 1 – Never stop marketing. If you have a business, you should always be doing some from of marketing. You may wish to vary the type and intensity of marketing when your  efforts have been so effective that demand outstrips your ability supply and you risk disappointing or annoying potential customers with long waiting periods or inferior product.

Waiting lists or back orders can be great for your entrepreneurial ego, but no good for your business long term as they threaten your business credibility. Part of being a good shoestring marketer and business person is about matching demand and supply in an acceptable time frame to your customers. When we had more demand than we could supply, we slowed things with a careful combination of price increase and reduction in marketing activity, but we continued to take up and pursue any free exposure opportunities that presented themselves on our laps.

Tell Me You Love Me in Words and Pictures

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word and picturesTestimonials from satisfied customers, put your prospective customers at ease. They give reassurance that your work has pleased others. When your customers pass on your name to others as in “word of mouth” this is a verbal testimonial. A written testimonial from a happy customer costs nothing other than your time asking for it.

Testimonials can be used in a portfolio of information about your product to prospective customers, they can used as support material, framed in the reception area of your business and excerpts can be used in your marketing collateral and as call outs on your website or blog.

Online, LinkedIn calls testimonials ‘recommendations’. As a matter of routine, you should ask connections you have done business for to provide you with a recommendation.

A testimonial letter can be on the customers letter head; can be short or long, hand written, typed, a You Tube clip, an online entry. As long as it makes prospective customers feel good about using your product or service, it’s a testimonial. Some organisations call these “praise or love letters”.

A bed and breakfast would keep a guest book with provision for comments from guests and this becomes their “brag book”. The comments that showcase the elements of their serivce that they are most proud of and best illustrate their unique offerings can be used as call outs on each page of their website or blog.

Letters from industry peers or celebrity endorsement can be useful in the right circumstances. I never forget receiving an information kit to exhibit at a Baby Boomer Expo which had a letter of Prime Ministerial endorsement from our Prime Minister of teh time, John Howard! Can you get Prime Ministerial endorsement for what you do?

I organised endorsement of my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary milestone from the Governor General, the Prime Minister, the State Premier and Local Member’s offices. I hate to admit it, but it’s not too difficult to organise – it just takes a little planning…and were my parents, family members and the guests impressed? You bet!

Positive publicity which you receive in the form of a radio or TV interview, write up in the local or metro newspapers, profile or interview for a magazine is great exposure for leads and your credibility, but the benefits are relatively short lived. You need to preserve it and incorporate it into your online and offline marketing efforts.

I kept a running list in reverse chronological order of all the media exposure our small business received since 1989 on the news page of our website.  I  laminated originals of the story for my permanent file, I photocopied or did colour reprints of selected pieces for prospective customers depending on what part of the business I was trying to pitch and to whom.

When Huey came to cook at Rocking Horse Lodge for our Open Weekend – he accidently dropped a wooden spoon in the grass which my daughter later found. At the end of the sojourn as is the custom,  Mr Moon, Huey’s culinary assistant, presented me with ‘the blue tea towel’. (Washed of course!) I was then able to have suitably mounted  – the spoon, the cover story in the local paper and the tea towel in a box frame and hung in the workshop in a high profile location. This provided mountains of credibility when the tour groups visited.

Across how many mediums can you promote how and why your customers love you and the feathers in your credibility cap?

The Good Old Bad Days

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In the good old bad days at Windsor Road, we had some tough times. We had roadworks obstructing vehicular access either in front of us, south or north of us the whole 5 years we lived there. My partner would sit by the roadside whittling Noah’s ark animals. We sold a complete Noah’s ark with animals worth $800 for $200 and I intermittently taught marketing at Hawkesbury Community College for a little extra income. We ate a lot of rice.

In those early days the rocking horses were made from truck loads of undressed scrap box timber from the box factory in Wilberforce which would be dumped in our yard. We evolved to buying $2000 slings of kiln-dried NZ radiata pine milled to the correct sizes.

Also from Wilberforce were cow tails from the abattoirs which we would collect and tan ourselves. It was a filthy job and you could not think about food at all on tanning day. We evolved to importing bespoke horse tails in a variety of colours from China – the world capital for horse hair.

Our original stirrups were made from hand bent aluminium bar and pop rivets and were replaced by importing sand cast and hand polished solid brass stirrups along with the brackets and snaffle bits from India. The swing irons which were cut, bent and threaded ourselves evolved to being done piece work by a retired engineer with the correct machinery at one-fifth the price of an engineering shop.

The nail-on pad saddles responsible for my weak wrists were replaced by miniature English riding saddles made in various colours and sizes and imported from India by piggy-backing on the container orders of a major horse accessories importer.

Simply because we did not have the capital, we focussed on incremental change and growth. The first incremental changes involved improving the perceived value of the horses to get the retail price up from $695.00.

Originally there was not a maker’s mark on the horses, so we set to work to design a brass nail-on plaque for the stand. The plaque maker traded a kit rocking horse for the cost of the initial engraving/set up and individual plaques were only $2.00 a piece. We later introduced a “Certificate of Authenticity “ and a “Certificate of Restoration” which were both hand signed by the maker and presented with the horses.

We improved the finish of the stands by routering the edges and sourcing a commercial turner to make the uprights.We turned the pillar uprights for the stands ourselves, which was ridiculously time-comsuming and relied on turning them exactly the same by eye!

Plastic Amber Crystal Eyes were replaced with German Glass Teddy Bear eyes with hand glued lashes – something which other makers have since copied.

During our growth phase it was very important to treat our suppliers well and pay them on time. As soon as we knew there would be a delay in payment, I was on the phone explaining the situation and nutting out an installment plan. At that time even our annual volumes were not large enough to be able to order from some suppliers.

As the improvements kicked in, we increased the retail price of the horses about $100 per year to $1695 for a standard and $3750 for a large horse. These prices were still well below backyard operators and other specialist retailer’s prices of anywhere between $2000 and $6000. So we offered a beautiful product of  excellent value for a great price, what more could a customer want?

Evolution of a Shoestring Marketer – A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Where I am Now…

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My shoestring marketer days must have all started when I was invited to attend a Hawkesbury Council Focus Breakfast designed to develop relations between council and local business. I must have stood out by being a little vocal about tourism issues and tourism marketing and as a result was asked to participate as a mentor with our council sponsored Youth Achievers Program.

I must have appeared sufficiently knowledgeable during the course of that program to be asked by the council’s Commercial Director to do a key note address on “Doing Business in the Hawkesbury – A Small Business Perspective” at a Mayoral Reception for welcoming new businesses.

 

From here I was invited by the then newly formed Windsor Business Group (a not for profit progress association), to be on their committee and help them put forward proposals to council for assistance funding. One of these was a series of Workshops for Marketing Small Business on a Shoestring Budget.

After conducting eight of the twenty shoestring marketing workshops contracted for, I was struck with the huge gap in the market place for tried and true marketing and pr generating techniques for those with tiny or no marketing budgets or know-how. The information had to be presented in bite-size chunks with a gradual progression of aggression, as most small business people need to “do” long before they can afford to outsource. Also, Australian’s are still hung up about blowing their own horns. Luckily I dont have this problem having spent 5 formative years in California learning the mechanics of how to do it with style and grace.

In the past I had responsibility for marketing budgets of $1M in one corporate arena; shoestring budgets from which miracles were expected in other corporate arenas and a nil budget when I started a small business.

I found after a while that I enjoyed the challenge and thrill of getting as much publicity and marketing done for as little money as possible. If I could run a household, family of four and a small business on a shoestring, surely I could do the same with my small business marketing program.

 

 

 

I calculated over a two year period, I got the equivalent of $250,000 worth of exposure in and on Radio, TV, Magazines, Newspapers, Trade Shows and local community for nothing. It got our business to the point where our classes were booked out 12 months in advance.  I actually had to stop shoestring marketing for a time in order to avoid frustrating prospective rocking horse making students with 12 month waiting lists.

In these blogs I will share with you how to do for your embryonic or established business what I have done for mine – Marketing PR  (Free Editorial in the Press) and Business Social Media exposure on a shoestring budget
in bite size chunks
for the 50 something brain
with an aggression progression.

 

Strap in –  should be a fun ride, cos I’m still learning too!