My seven year old son gave me a very simple, yet valuable and profound business lesson this weekend.  He had some homework to do and part of that homework was to write about what had happened that weekend.

Admittedly, we didn’t have an exciting weekend, I was at a seminar on Saturday and on Sunday, it was a day for getting jobs done.  But this is what he wrote.

“On Sunday, we went to Tescos.  When we got to the the bakery part, I asked my Daddy for a cookie.  He said NO.   So, I asked my Daddy for a cookie.  He said No.  So I asked my Daddy for a cookie. He said No. So I asked my Daddy for a cookie.  He bought me a cookie.  The end.”

Now, in that short story, there’s such a strong message.

When we were young, we were relentless in asking for what we want, often going on and on and on until our parents gave in. We didn’t give up. We just kept asking and asking until we got the prize.

But when we grew up and in business we seemed to have lost that tenacity.

We give up after hearing the first “No”.

We only contact a prospect once in case we upset them.

We do a one step marketing campaign instead of a multiple step sequential marketing campaign

There are stats to show that most people will not buy anything until they have been in touch with the supplier between 5-7 times.  Yet the majority of business owners and sales people will give up trying after the first or second attempt.

More often than not in business, no doesn’t mean no, it just means “No for now”

You need to keep in touch with your prospects, not be scared of the initial rejection, have belief in your product and your ability to sell it and have belief that your prospect will eventually buy from you.

You need to continually market and keep in touch with your prospects, letting them know that you’ve got a really good reason why they should be buying from you.

If you’re running a newspaper ad, test it, measure it, tweak it and run it again.

If you’re having leaflets delivered, once you’ve identified that you’re having them delivered to the right area, keep delivering them.

Have the persistency of the 7 year old, become hardened to hearing the word no but keep carrying on. Keep asking, keep marketing and you’ll get to the YES.

When we talk to our clients and prospective clients about leaflet delivery, one of the things that we tell them is that the worst number in marketing is one.  To get the best results out of leaflets, you need to repeat them.

To find out more about how to get the best results from leaflet delivery – Registar for our webinar – The Secrets to a winning leaflet delivery campaign – Click here to register

..Brand advertising and Direct Marketing

Part of our role as expert leaflet marketeers is to help our clients get a better response in their direct marketing activities.  What this sometimes means is that we do a critique on the customers leaflets and quite often we find that the client has not understood the difference between brand awareness type advertising and direct marketing.

I stand by the statement that unless you have millions to burn on brand building advertising, then for the majority of small businesses, your marketing budget should be spent on direct marketing.  So what’s the difference between the two?

• Brand advertising is where the aim is to remember you. Direct marketing is where the aim is for someone to pick up the phone, visit your premise and buy from you
• Brand advertising is used to build your image or brand. Direct marketing is to there to provide enough information for the person to want to take action
• Brand advertising has an uncontrolled wide reach. Direct marketing can be highly targetted
• Brand advertising has no direct intent. Direct marketing has defined intent
• Brand advertising is not trackable. Direct marketing is fully trackable.

Put simply, brand advertising is more about just broadcasting your business name and logo whereas direct marketing is more about selling your product or service and getting the reader to take action now.

Check out this example of a brand advertising – this was on a billboard, seen by 1000′s of people. It is no more than a logo and a slogan.  Whilst Adidas may have thousands if not millions to spend on promoting a brand, it would be foolish to do if you run a small business

Brand advertising simply says “We exist” whereas direct marketing says “We exist, we know you have a problem, we can solve that problem and heres the reason why we’re the best people to solve that problem for you and here’s what you should do right now.”

As small business owners, we don’t have money to waste.  EVERY single piece of marketing activity should be accountable to produce a response. You should know what each and every piece of marketing is producing in return. If it’s not producing a return then either tweak it or bin it.  If it is producing a return then do more of it.

For more about how a direct marketing leaflet campaign can help your business get more clients – Attend our webinar – Click here to register.

We launched our franchise offering to the world this week. We’ve been running a pilot franchise of The Leaflet Delivery Company in Aylesbury for coming up to a year. we’ve been refining our systems and procedure ready to launch to market and now we’re ready to go.

So, announcing our new franchise website www.leafletdeliveryfranchise.com which explains our full offering.

I’m really pleased with it – And credit goes to our friends at the design agency 1985 ltd who have done an excellent job in putting together a lot of information in to a clean, easy to navigate site.

Yesterday, we were expecting a large delivery of magazines which needed to be unloaded from a lorry.  We have a large flatbed trolley that we use for these deliveries.  However, when we loaded the trolley up, we noticed one of the tyres was flat.

I fetched our footpump and attached it to the tyre and started to pump it up, but for some reason it wasn’t inflating.  Further inspection revealed that a valve had snapped on the air chamber of the pump.

So, we had a lorry semi-blocking the road and no operational trolley to unload the boxes onto.  Luckily our office is in an area where there are a couple of hardware shops that sell tools and the like and I thought that one of them surely would sell a footpump.

I legged it round to the nearest and asked the assistant if they had a footpump.  He told me that he thought he had one somewhere and helped me search an area of the store for it.  whilst doing so, I explained my predicament and that I was in a hurry because of the lorry waiting for me.

Eventually he found the item, blew the dust off it.  But what he did next really surprised me.  He looked at the item, saw the price on it, (About £35) and then said “That’s expensive, why don’t you go to Halfords, it’ll be much cheaper there.”

I told him again that I needed it urgently because of the delivery waiting to be unloaded and that I needed it.  So he then said – I tell you what,  I’ll knock 20% off for you.

Now the fact that he was steering the shops customers elsewhere was bad enough, potentially losing a sale and a customer, but then, slashing the stores profits by giving me a discount was totally unecessary and unforgivable.

To be honest, at that time, because of my pressing need to get the trolley operational,  I would have probably paid an extra £10-£15 without batting an eyelid.  I needed the item and I needed it now.

If he was my employee, we would have had to have serious words.

Discounts have their place,  but they should NEVER be given away as a matter of course.  When you give a discount, it comes straight off your bottom line and straight out of your pocket.  You can’t go to the supplier of the item and say, I sold this for less than the recommended price, so can I have it cheaper.  It’s not going to come off the cost of goods sold.

If you know the lifetime value of a customer, you can use a discount to attract someone new, effectively “Buying” a new client, but other than that they should be used very sparingly.

We constantly get asked to discount our prices, the answer is always a resounding no.  We have a set price structure per thousand leaflets and we reward people for ordering more.  As they order higher quantities, the price per thousand gets cheaper.

When we advise clients on how to get the best out of their leaflet delivery campaigns, we always recommend that they should have an offer with a deadline.  But offers should make you money not cost you money.  I never recommend flat discounts, but look at ways to use an offer to increase the order value or increase the frequency of order.

For example “Buy two get one free”.  Order 10 or more widgets and you’ll receive a free XXX.

Are you giving discount unnecessarily?  Are you giving away money when you don’t need to?

Give me a call if you would like any help or advice on how to craft a great offer for your business.