Strategies to Keep Customers Coming Back to Do Business With You

By Jan Smith

There are many strategies to use to keep customers coming back to do business with you but the first one should always be honesty in all your dealings with them. Give them a good service or product at a fair price and never try to cheat them by 'putting one over' on them. People may not always be able to prove that you are or have cheated them, but many of them will know it instinctively.

Instinct is often an overlooked word in today's business environment but you ignore it at your loss.

Integrity in Business:

Integrity in the Oxford English Dictionary (circa 1964) is described as:

"integrity, n. Wholeness; soundness; uprightness, honesty. [ME, f. OF -te, or L integritas (integer, see-ty)]"

So basically it simply means honesty and wholeness in your business dealings or way of life. To live upright according to your word; and to deal with people in a sound, honest and wholesome way. This should always be your first strategy to keep customers coming back to do business with you.

Word of Mouth:

If you always follow the above strategy then good word of mouth (WOM) advertising will be given to you and this is advertising that you simply cannot, nor ever will be, able to buy. This is priceless and the very best advertising that you can ever have.

If someone a person knows recommends your business or service highly, then this acts as social proof that you are a legitimate and honest person to deal with. People always feel more comfortable dealing with someone that someone that they already know and trust, has recommended.

Quality Product:

There is absolutely no point in selling any product that you yourself, wouldn't use or recommend. This sounds too obvious a point but if you don't sell a product that offers good quality for the price being paid for it, then it can't be said to be a quality product.

Quality doesn't mean it has to be "gold standard". Most people, especially today on a very tight family budget, can't afford the "gold standard". What people today need is a quality product for a price that they can afford to pay, to do whatever the product is designed to do.

Quality Service:

Good service always starts with a friendly greeting. This is sometimes overlooked when people walk through your business door and you are busy or they arrive at an inconvenient time for you. People will always remember how they are treated long after the job is done.

Quality service involves more than a friendly greeting and a satisfactory job; it requires a relationship with your customer that can't be found anywhere else from someone providing a similar service to your own.

The above four principles of integrity, word of mouth, quality product and quality service will give any business in any industry, a firm foundation for a very profitable, long-term business well into the future.

All Business strategies today still depend on the basic foundations that have formed good business practices throughout time but today are often disregarded.

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Reasons Why Some Businesses Fail

By Alexis Roth

"Lessons about business"

A lot of people dream of starting their own business, but many of them fail. This isn't just limited to small businesses, but some major corporations may also fail. There is no set way to keep your company afloat, especially during the recession. However, there are some set reasons as to why many businesses fail. If you are starting your own business, or have had one up and running for a while, here are some things to look out for to help keep your operation going strong.

Many people who decide to go at it on their own don't have a business plan set up. This may mean they set up a website or even a store front, but really don't know how that with get them from where they are starting out, to where they would like to be in 10 years. Successful corporations may have started out very simply with only two or three employees, but they knew where they wanted to be in the end. Have a game plan for how your business will do in that particular market. Sit down with your business partner(s) to go over how you would like to operate and manage your organization.

Once you have a game plan, make sure you have proper funding. Many of those who fail may have had a great idea and plan, but no funding. For most small businesses, you will have to expect that you yourself will not see any money for several years until your company is more established and has a constant cash flow. Money adds up fast and sometimes before you realize it. Of course one of the big costs is paying any employees you may have, paying for the office your work out of, any supplies, business insurance, and even paying for your website. Make sure you can create a budget that you know can sustain your company. Talk to a financial advisor if you need to, and check with investors to see if you can get some extra funding.

Keep in mind your customers and what product you have to offer. So, this one goes with the other two. You need to do some research as to what consumers want and need and what your product will do for them. If you are selling a hair brush that actually tangles hair more than brushes, and your consumers want a brush that will detangle, then your product is not going to be a big hit in stores. You will want to plan out what the product can do, how, and how it is helpful to customers. Look at different demographics as well. All of this information can be used when you present your business to possible investors. Investors will like to know that you have your product planned out and have already thought about the needs of your targeted consumers.

Remember why you started your business. Sometimes people who start something up lose track of what they originally intended to do. Keep focused no matter what happens. There are going to ups and downs from time to time, but you have to remember what you are here to do. If you can get everything already planned out and lined up then when you have these little bumps in the road it will be easier to pick up the pieces and keep going, or to change your game plan. Having things like your finances, business insurance, and worker's compensation already taken care of can help easy you a long as you work on your businesses success and not its failures. Remember, not all companies fail, some reach above and beyond what they expected.

Alexis Roth
Business Liability Insurance
Reasons Business Start-Ups Fail

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Coming Up With A New Business Idea

By Rolf D. Versluis

When you have made the decision that you want to start your own business the choices can be overwhelming. There are so many different things that you can do, so many people offering you advice, it can be tempting to fall into analysis paralysis. There are some basic concepts of new business formation that I have seen and thought about over the years that may provide you a starting point.

One of the most defensible businesses is a combination of product and specialized service that works with local customers who have a need. Retail examples are dry cleaners and restaurants. They each have special equipment like steam boilers or kitchens, have some level of consumables like dry-cleaning fluid or food, and expertise in the staff that make them into good, stable businesses. Although these are good businesses, they are not ones that I would choose to start. There is a lot of competition, profit margins are low, there is a lot of management involved, and there is no clear path to making enough money to fast growth. The combination of product and expert services with local customers is a good one, but it has to be in a more profitable arena

The things I look for in new business ideas are the following: 

• Combination of product and service.
• Clearly and narrowly defined customer base that is willing to spend money.
• Ability to create a barriers of entry to competition.
• Repeating sales instead of one-time sales.
• Customer acquisition and servicing cost low versus profitability.
• Future growth prospects.
• Initial investment of capital and time.

It is also very important to know your own interests. Again, with a whole world of business ideas to choose from, you should pick something that you enjoy and already have an interest in. There are ways to make money in just about anything. If your interest is music, then you should start something involving music because it will be fun and you probably know what musicians and music lovers want and need. Don't make things hard on yourself, but also don't go down the path of mediocrity. It would be easy and simple to take a job as musician or music instructor, but that is just a job. It is harder yet much more rewarding to come up with an unfulfilled need and meet it. 

• Know your own interests.
• Think about unfulfilled or poorly filled needs.
• With constant technology change, are there new and better ways to do things?
• Is there a new business concept in a similar industry you can copy?

Instead of striking out new in an entirely unproven direction, take stock of what you already do on a day-to-day basis. Some of the most successful new business were started by employees that saw an opportunity to address a profitable niche and were frustrated by their company ignoring it for so long. There are many great things about leaving the company that you work for and starting a niche business in the same industry, especially if it does not compete with your current employer: 

• Existing base of potential customers that you already know.
• Your industry reputation will help you succeed.
• Focus on niche market allows for clear definition of mission.
• Potential partnership opportunities with companies in your industry.

After coming up with your idea, there are many things you can do with it. Realize that it may be valuable, so don't go around telling everyone that you are going to do it. Conversely, realize there are few people out there who are willing to take on the risk of starting a new business, so you can discuss the idea in general terms to test the waters. Then see if there is already somebody doing this, whether it is in your market or somewhere else. If it still seems like a good idea, start running through the profitability numbers. If it still seems like a good idea, great! You can start making preparations and plans to take it to the next step.

Get business startup and operations perspective, as well as excellent online resources at Priority Cue.

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"The Marketing Toolkit" book review by Biz Skills 2000

Marketing is such a key subject for the success of a small business that I would recommend spending any spare time you have (And yep, I do know we’re all busy people) researching and reading up on this topic. Put simply, if you don’t market your products well enough, you’ve got no sales, no revenue and no business.

Starting this introduction again, I should in fact be strongly recommending that you make time to find out about marketing for the long term good of your business - it really is that crucial.

Anyway, I recently came across a good book on marketing which I’ve found very useful. Marketing is a very broad subject, so if you’re still finding your way around and are a bit hazy about what to do next, then let me recommend “The Marketing Toolkit” by Jeff Della Mura.

Jeff’s book sets out to cover all aspects of the marketing spectrum in fifty bite-sized chunks. With much use of bullet points, simple explanations and real world examples I found this book relaxing to read, easy to understand and very clearly laid out. It’s very straightforward to find the topic you’re looking for and Jeff tries hard to link you from the topic you’re actually reading to other connected topics elsewhere in the book.

While the book covers all the fundamentals of marketing (like branding; advertising; wise words and sales literature; internet marketing and website design; communication and customer satisfaction) the book is carefully designed to show you the links between related components within any and all of these fundamentals in a building-it-brick-by-brick style. This greatly helps you to avoid overlooking something important that you realise you should have done when its far too late to stop the launch of your new marketing campaign.

One thing you need to know about this book is that its more of an “ideas book” than a “copy me” book. What I mean is that its a superb checklist of what you could be doing but you then have to read up somewhere else about the detail of how to do it. (Please take a look at my website www.BizSkills2000.co.uk for home study courses and free factsheets on marketing skills.)

To summarise then, I would rate “The Marketing Toolkit” by Jeff Della Mura as an excellent “dip in - dip out”  reference book at an affordable cover price of £9.99 when first published in 2009 - but see the advert nearby for the best price currently available on Amazon.

I always look forward to picking up “The Marketing Toolkit” every couple of months and just browsing through it. I always put it back down later on having found another great idea for my business, and so will you. Recommended.

• “The Marketing Toolkit” by Jeff Della Mura. Published by “How To Books”, Oxford 2009 ISBN 978 1 84528 285 1

5 Critical Rules For Naming A Business

By Wes Cutshall

1. Make it Unique
Your business name should be unique and not easily confused with other names. You don't want your clients to confuse you with other similar companies. Word of mouth is the most successful, and common, method of marketing. When people talk about your company they often will not be giving out your phone number, address, or website domain name. Make sure that when people talk about your business there is no confusion as to if they are talking about another company.

2. Make it Memorable
Memorable and unique are not the same thing. Your business name should not only be unique but it should also be easily remembered when shared with others. You want your clients to have your business name on the tip of their tongue when telling others about your company. When people hear your business name, by word of mouth, you want to make sure they remember the name without needing to write it down. This is why rhyming and play-on-words is so common in business naming.

3. Make it Descriptive
Don't overlook how important it is that customers can tell what your product or service is just from your name. You should at least hint at the industry your business is in. You want people to feel confident when they approach your company for service. Two examples seen recently of poorly described business names are "Versatile Ambiance" and "Vera Bird." Neither of these names gives a potential client any confidence in doing business with them.

4. Make it Easy to Spell
Funky names can be fun, but they can be hard to share through word of mouth. Although some brands have found success with misspelled or complexly spelled names, in general, it takes more marketing power to get traction with names that are not easy to spell. Avoid hard to pronounce names for the same reasons. Starting a business has enough hurdles and obstacles, don't give yourself more by creating a complex name that nobody can spell.

5. Use Naming Tools
Let's admit it, you're not very creative, but other people are. Entrepreneurs are now turning to crowdsourcing to help name their businesses. Crowdsourcing is the practice of using the public to solve a task normally solved by an agency. On crowdsourcing naming sites the public can help name your business through a contest. You can normally get hundreds to thousands of name suggestions through crowdsourced business contests.

Wes Cutshall is a serial entrepreneur and business namer. He is the CEO of Naming Force, a business naming website.

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How to Do an Effective Product Launch

By Simon Harding 

You have decided to make a new product for your company. You already have completed the initial steps of product development. Now, all you have to do is product launch. You may think that this is the easiest step of your product development. Do not take product launching for granted. If the launching is effective, it can give profitable impact to your company while an ineffective one will just waste your efforts of developing a new product.

Take time in planning out how you will launch your products. This is important because you will never have a second chance once you have launched your products. It's a do or die. It is either you will have a successful launching or not. Because of this, you will have to make sure that everything will be fine when you launch.

Launching is the big day for you and your new product. This is the reason why you will need to have the necessary preparation for it. If you overlook even a single factor, you may end up having major problems on your big day. Of course, you don't want this to happen. You would want to have a smooth and glitch-free launching possible.

The first thing that you must consider in a product launch is the targeted market. This is an important tool that most marketers tend to neglect. You can determine the target market by doing some research. You have to consider their age, financial capacity, habits, wants, needs, and other things that might help you. After you determined your target, you will now have an easier time to determine the product that thy will likely purchase.

Now that you have the idea for your new product, you will have to make people know about it. You can achieve this by sending out promotional advertisements and materials. Using the internet for this purpose will be very helpful. You will be able to reach out to a large number of people.

Also, you can take a look at the present launching strategies. Determine how the successful products were launched. Find out how they were delivered in the market, when and where the launching took place.

After you have launched your product, you should not leave it that way. Products will also reach a time where they have to be updated. When you have to update your product, make sure that people will know about it. You can make use of several marketing techniques to accomplish this. Make people know that you have made some innovations and tell them what the new product's advantages are. This will entice them on getting your updated product.

The process of product launch is not as simple as you may think it is. There are different considerations and planning that you must take note. You must dedicate your time and effort in making the launching successful. This will ensure that you will not meet any trouble during the launching which may drastically affect your products

Remember that launching is as important as making the product itself. Because of that, you need to plan well for that big day. For more information about Product Launch, visit us at http://www.workrightsapp.com/ now! Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Simon_Harding