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Marketing Tip #20: Offers your clients can’t refuse

Aug 10 | by Laura Allen | Marketing Tips
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It may seem like a small thing to do and some may find it trivial, but offering potential clients something they may not get from their competitors can make all the difference. 

It could be something as simple as a free trial of a product so a person can test your product, but also your company.  If they like the product they will like your company and may recommend you to friends and family.

It’s all about giving clients that little bit extra.  For example, when you stay at a hotel and they have prepared the room for you; turned back the duvet, put a mint on your pillow (if you’re lucky) and so on, it makes you feel special and that they’ve gone out of their way to make you feel so.

We offer a FREE 1 hour consultation for every client with no strings attached.  This way a potential client can voice all their concerns and questions before paying for any of the services we offer and, of course, deciding if we’re the company for them.  We can then get a good idea of what the client wants and needs to make sure we get the concept right first time.

So remember, a little can go a long way…

How many of us are missing opportunities?

Aug 5 | by Laura Allen | Koogar HQ
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How many opportunities escape our attention daily?

Whether the opportunity is reaching out to potential customers, acknowledging a new customer, welcoming someone to your network circle or helping them out; the keyword is ENGAGEMENT.

Engaging other people takes:

  • Forethought to know about a contact’s needs, what a potential customer wants and what a new member can gain from a network circle.
  • Awareness of situations, who you are meeting and how these can benefit your new or potential customers.
  • Effort to find out about others and follow up with them.

A good example is networking as this provides plently of opportunities to engage with others, making new contacts and establishing business connections. 

When networking you need to put forethought into what type of event it is, what businesses will be there and who you are looking to meet.  It is always a benefit to know exactly what you want to get out of a networking event. 

You need to be aware of networking circles- who is having a closed, private conversation and who is open and approachable.  It is good to be aware of what people are saying to you as although they may not be a useful contact for yourself they might be perfect for one of your contacts. 

Finally, you need to make an effort.  It’s no good standing in the corner and waiting for people to come to you.  You must be motivated to go up to people and introduce yourself!

So, remember the rules of engagement; Forethought, Awareness and Effort to prevent missed opportunities.

Marketing Tip #19: SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

Aug 3 | by Laura Allen | Marketing Tips
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SEO is the process of improving the volume of traffic to a website, known as ‘hits.’  The higher a site appears in a search result list the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

When considering SEO for your web site it is important to consider your ‘keywords’ – what will your target market enter in a search engine to look for you?  There are a number of ways, once you have your keywords, to ensure a search engine visits your site regularly.

For example, frequently updating your content (a great way is through blogging) will catch a search engine’s eye, so to speak, meaning it will re-visit your web site again and again and each time it does so it is bettering your chances of moving up the search engine ladder!  

The majority of our web sites come with a basic SEO package.  However, what about finding those sought after keywords?  Well we can help with this too.  We have a new service in motion, which includes finding suitable keywords for your company as well as keyword analysis (a process whereby we test your chosen keywords to see if they work within a search engine).

For more information on our new SEO service, please contact us.

Marketing Tip #18: Packages

Jul 30 | by Laura Allen | Marketing Tips
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Putting packages of your products or services together, in a special offer sort of way, is a winning situation for both yourself and your customers/clients.  Packages show them what other products you have to offer and ones that compliment each other.  From the client’s point of view they receive a discount, a great deal on a product or service they want.  See…win win.

If your company has a lot of services or products to offer and you know your customers/clients have a specific need for several of them then it is a good idea to create packages, bundles and so on.

By creating different types of packages that offer a variety of your products in each, you are adding a little something extra for your client.

For example, we now have three Koogar packages;

Each of these packages offer set products, which is added to depending on the size of the package you choose.  Our Kub package offers the set products as it is the smallest - a cub being a small lion.  Whereas, a mane is associated with a bigger lion and so this package has an extra product included.  A pride relates to a large group of lions, which reflects the large size of our third package, which contains everything the previous two have but has a couple of extras thrown in.

So, why not have a look at your products and services and see what you can come up with?

It’s not me, it’s you…

Jul 9 | by Laura Allen | Business Forum
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You might be wondering what a Lily Allen album has to do with helping you increase your sales.

Well, the album hasn’t but the title has – let me explain.

When we meet a new client for the first time, we’re always more nervous than they are – Will they like me? Will they want what I’m selling?

It’s natural to feel nervous. But the down-side is that it makes us do things we shouldn’t.

For one, it makes us talk too much. Why is that?

There are many reasons, but we’ll look at two here –  

  1. Fear of silence
  2. Desire to tell the client everything we can about us

Let’s look at silence first – we don’t like it, especially when we’re nervous. 10 seconds of silence can feel like an eternity. So we feel we have to fill the silence by talking. Here’s the thing – we don’t have to be the only one talking. In fact, we really don’t want to be the one talking at all.

We’re there to find out more about the client and their business so we can decide the best way to help them – and we can only do that by asking questions, and shutting up!

How many times have we found ourselves asking a question and then answering it before the client has chance to speak? Or even worse, talking over the client as they’re trying to answer? A simple rule to remember – if a question is worth asking, the answer is worth listening to.

And don’t be afraid to find out more. If the client gives us an answer, don’t be afraid to dig a little deeper – Why is that important? How did you come to that decision?

We’re not digging for the sake of it; we’re giving ourselves the broadest picture of the client’s situation in order to be able to help them in the best possible way. And it gets our client talking – and the more they’re talking the less we are!

So, why do we always fall into telling the client everything about us? Because we see it as safe ground – we know all about us so we feel most comfortable talking about it. But unfortunately, while we’re talking about us we’re not finding out about them. If we’re lucky enough to secure a 30-minute meeting , we should spend the first 20 minutes finding out about the client, then spend the last 10-minutes talking about us -  and there’s a trick to doing that, too!

So, what does Lily Allen have to do with this? Think about it – when we meet a client for the first time, it’s not about us; it’s all about the client. It’s not me, it’s you…

I’m sure that grabbed your attention and made you think about your next meeting with a client. 

 Please feel free to comment on the blog or if you have any matters that you wish to speak to Damian about,  feel free to contact him by following the link below.

http://www.clear-results.org

July’s Guest Blogger…

Jul 6 | by Laura Allen | Business Forum
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Damian Thompson: Director of Clear Results – It’s not me, it’s you…

“You might be wondering what a Lily Allen album has to do with helping you increase your sales.  Well, the album hasn’t but the title has – let me explain.“

Damian is the Director of Clear Results, who provide sales training and development.  Damian’s blog takes an interesting look into you, as a business, addressing a client and exposes our vulnerabilities and ways to address them.

Many people have a pre-conceived idea of sales and for a few the mere mention of the word ’sales’ strikes an instant dislike to it.  However, Damian’s sharp and witty blog dissolves these misconceptions immediately, showing you how to get clear results when it comes to sales.

http://www.clear-results.org/

Marketing Tip #16: Follow Up

Jul 2 | by Laura Allen | Marketing Tips
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Here’s a marketing tip you should do with every potential client and existing ones…Follow Up!

It’s amazing how valued a person feels if you take the time to ring them or email them about a product they have just purchased or service you provided for them.  Here’s a little known fact about sales – the majority of sales take place after the third or fourth contact.  So if you ring a client back and get the answering machine or receive no reply to your email do not simply give up as you will be throwing away a good opportunity to sell your company!

We make sure that after each networking event we attend we send an email to people we have spoken with as a further introduction and to remind them of who we are and what we do.  Similarly, whenever we have met with a client and given them a quote and proposal we will get in touch with them a week later to ensure that they understand and are happy with everything we have outlined.

An SEO-filled week…

Jun 29 | by Laura Allen | Koogar HQ
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Over the last week we have been getting ourselves re-acquainted with the concepts of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), because we just love to learn!

We took part, at the end of last week, in a workshop detailing the fundamentals of SEO and new analytical tools that have become available.  As you can imagine we were very excited with introducing new tools into our working day, especially those which will definitely benefit our clients!

Earlier this week we followed up our SEO basics by going along to a seminar in Whiston to get a broad update on the subject.  I have to admit some of it went a little over my head as I’m not the web developer of the group, but over all it re-affirmed what I knew about SEO.

So for those of you who are still wondering what exactly SEO involves, here’s a few tips:

1. Make sure your key words are not too broad, but at the same time ensure they are widely used.

2. You should have different keywords for each page of your web site, but be careful not to use your keywords too much within the text or too little as it could result in that page being blacklisted.

3. Remember, no-one can promise you the number one spot on a search engine!

Obviously there is a lot more to it than that, but hopefully this will give you a better idea of what is SEO.

Marketing Tip #15: Testimonials

Jun 22 | by Laura Allen | Marketing Tips
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Testimonials can seem similar to case studies, but they are not.  If a client has received a good service from your business they decide off their own back to write to you about the service they received.  They usually contain what exactly you did for them and the quality of the service.

Testimonials are definitely a great source to add to your website – you can even create a ‘testimonials’ page highlighting your business’ strengths to new and prospective customers/clients.

We have a testimonials page on our web site, which has a few selected testimonials about different aspects of our business.  We are careful to not over-do it with our testimonials and we change what’s on the web site when we get new testimonials in so customers, either existing or potential, can get a real understanding of what it is we do.

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