Hey All,

I hope you all had a mighty fine Christmas and are ready for the New Year. Here are some marketing rules that will assist your business in 2009 and beyond. Enjoy!

1. Get lots of exposure and do it repeatedly. Obviously telling a few people or having some customers talk about you is great, but it’s not enough. You have to get your message out into your target market in a BIG way using leverage whenever possible. When I’m referring to leverage, I’m referring to having fellow service business owners talking about your business to THEIR customer base. It’s a lot easier than you as just one person having to do all the talking. So get other business to talk it up. The jobs you’ll gain from this talk will put you on the map. Some people don’t realize how much power there is in numbers. Imagine having 10, 20, 30, or more businesses out there spreading the word about you. Powerful!

2. Be Memorable – If your marketing doesn’t wake someone up and make ‘em remember you, then you did it wrong. It absolutely needs to be memorable. So tweak it until it is. The good news is that there are loads of average joes out there just following the crowd, so it’s not too hard to stand out and be noticed.

3. Be Meaningful – Today more than ever it is important to provide consumers with REAL value. The importance of providing value in your marketing and in the jobs you do will get the wheels turning quickly. Many people don’t know this, but I do zero advertising for my window cleaning software product The Customer Factor. And the reason is because I don’t have to. Other software users do my advertising for me. So again, be meaningful, provide value, and then get out of the way and watch your business grow.

4. Fear of Loss, Social Proof, and Testimonials are the reason why I was able to charge what I did for window cleaning. Using my window cleaning service wasn’t cheap. But by using a combination of these tactics (fear of loss included reverse psychology of giving the prospect an estimate and then walking away…social proof and testimonials came from word of mouth advertising from satisfied customers and lots of references in each estimate package) it worked. Of course it all has to be backed up with a quality job which relates back to point 3 (be meaningful and provide value).

5. Reinvest a good portion of your profits back into marketing. The percentage to reinvest depends on where you are in the business and what your ultimate goal is for your business. If you’re just starting out and you want to eventually go full time, then a 30% reinvestment is good. If you’ve been in the window cleaning business for a year and you’ve got the ‘ole marketing machine producing results for you, then 15 to 20% may be a good reinvestment. But always, always reinvest a portion back into your business.

Lets make 2009 YOUR Best Year Ever!!!

Take care for now.

Steve

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