Follow the 10 cents per ounce rule as a great guideline to help you save money on groceries.For many foods like cereal and snack foods like chips, pretzels, and crackers, I’ve found that if you pay about 10 cents per ounce, you know you’re generally getting a good deal. So when you see items that are priced less than that (especially if they’re half that), you know it’s a great time to stock up.
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11. Start getting some sales.No matter your product or industry, your business's future is going to depend on revenue and sales. Steve Jobs knew this -- it's why, when he was starting Apple, he spent day after day calling investors from his garage.
There are a ton of different sales strategies and techniques you can employ, but here are four tenets to live by:
12. Grow your business.There are a million different ways to grow. You could acquire another business, start targeting a new market, expand your offerings and more. But, no growth plan will matter if you don't have the two key attributes that all growing companies have in common.
First, they have a plan to market themselves. They use social media effectivelythrough organic, influencer or paid campaigns. They have an email list and know how to use it. They understand exactly who they need to target -- either online or off -- with their marketing campaigns.
Then, once they have a new customer, they understand how to retain them. You've probably heard many people state that the easiest customer to sell to is the one you already have. Your existing customers have already signed up for your email list, added their credit card information to your website and tested what you have to offer. In doing so, they're starting a relationship with you and your brand. Help them feel as good about that relationship as possible.
Start by utilizing these strategies, which include investing in your customer service and getting personal, but realize your work will never be done. You'll constantly be competing for these customers in the marketplace, and you can never simply rest on your laurels. Keep researching the market, hiring good people and making a superior product and you'll be on your way to building the empire you always dreamed about.
1. Sell convenience.Customers like comfort and accessibility. So, your brand has to continually find innovative ways to make your products and services available and accessible to customers on the go.
Take a look at Starbucks, the coffee giant. It continually ups its game, with innovative ways to ensurecustomer comfort. For instance, its Mobile Order & Pay feature in its app fairly screams “ease.” That strategy alone is worth paying a few extra bucks for and likely to ensure brand loyalty.
2. Pre-engage with your prospects.No matter how focused your online marketing efforts are, or how fine-tuned your website, today’s prospects rarely fill out forms or order services after getting their first impression. The noise is just too big; too much else is going on; too little time has gone by during that first visit, to build trust.
B2B sales intelligence tools like Infusion Soft, Leadberry or Marketo solve this problem by helping businesses to pre-engage with their clients and follow up with anonymous B2B visitors. According to Adam Jankovits, the CEO of B2B Lead generation company Leadberry, “On average, only 1.5 percent of first-time visitors will convert on your website; thus 98.5 percent of your online marketing spend can be easily a waste of money, if you are in the B2B sector and looking for clients to come to your door. Treating anonymous B2B visitors as prospects and reaching out to them via social media is a rapidly growing trend in the B2B sector”
Additionally, in B2B marketing, focusing on accounts rather than leads is needed to gain focus (this is called account-based marketing). Rather than wait for potential clients to interact with your business, your business can use account-based-marketing to select companies it would like to close and proactively go after them.
3. Get personal.Know your customers on a personal level. Humanize your brand; let customers relate and interact with it like it’s a person. Get to know what matters to them. Send them messages on important dates like birthdays. Send them emails and newsletters and start those communications with their first names.
For long-term customers, send personalized and brandedmaterials to continually place your brand into their personal space; sustain their top-of-mind awareness. This can also inspire referrals to friends and family to experience your brand.
4. Let your corporate social responsibility be impactful.Find needs that people are interested in filling, and try to fill those needs. TOMS has mastered the art of this strategy with its “one for one” campaign, where every pair of shoes sold translates to another pair being given to charity or someone in need.
TOMS has given away over 60 million pairs of new shoes and converted new customers into brand loyalists. This social impact angle is definitely a welcome development and one everyone wishes more brands would adopt.
5. Implement customer feedback.Feedback should be taken seriously and implemented as much as the business can manage. Once feedback has been implemented, communicate with customers that you listened to them and as a result, added the new, suggested feature, or eliminated an old one.
In a recent chat I had with Jean-Sebastian Pelland, director of Eland Cables on how his company implements customer feedback so as to ensure customer satisfaction, he said: “The customer feedback we received saw a premium placed on quality and service -- something we never compromise on.
"So we went to the lengths of establishing an in-house testing laboratory in order to offer additional quality assurance. Understandably, customers like to feel they are getting the best deal available; and delivering a premium product at a great price with expert technical support is our way of doing that.”
Then there are companies like Nike that have totally rocked the customer feedback feature. Nike created a separate Twitter account, @NikeSupport, just for responding to customer inquiries and issues. The company's Nike Support is dedicated to all things customer service, making it easier for customers to reach out when they have a problem or a question they want answered.
The company's support staff are also quick to respond.
6. Create amazing experiences.Continuously create out-of-this world experiences that are unique to you. These could be in-store, at trade shows, at global or local events or through product interaction.
A company that does this well is Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola has continuously shown this through campaigns like its campus-friendly twist, where a Coca-Cola bottle can be opened only by the matching bottle of a friend, and its unwrap a gift bottle program, where many people got Christmas bowties from their Coca-Cola bottles.
Related: Customer Loyalty 3.0 Is Never About Transactions. It's About Getting to Know Your Customers.
In conclusion, your customers are primarily concerned about two things: your product quality and good communication. If your brand can offer a top-notch product while holding things together at the social media interactive level, as well as the social impact one, you won't have a loyalty problem.
There are a ton of different sales strategies and techniques you can employ, but here are four tenets to live by:
- Listen. "When you listen to your clients/customers, you find out what they want and need, and how to make that happen,” says investor and entrepreneur John Rampton.
- Ask for a commitment, but don't be pushy about it. You can't be too shy to ask for a next step or to close a sale, but you also can't make customers feel as though you're forcing them into a sale.
- Don't be afraid of hearing "no." As former door-to-door salesman (and now co-founder of software business Pipedrive) Timo Rein said, "Most people are too polite. They let you make your pitch even if they have no interest in buying. And that’s a problem of its own. Time is your most important resource."
- Make it a priority. As entrepreneurial wizard Gary Vaynerchuk said, “Actually creating revenue, and running a profitable business, is a good strategy for business. Where are we that people think users or visits or time on site is the proxy to a successful business?”
12. Grow your business.There are a million different ways to grow. You could acquire another business, start targeting a new market, expand your offerings and more. But, no growth plan will matter if you don't have the two key attributes that all growing companies have in common.
First, they have a plan to market themselves. They use social media effectivelythrough organic, influencer or paid campaigns. They have an email list and know how to use it. They understand exactly who they need to target -- either online or off -- with their marketing campaigns.
Then, once they have a new customer, they understand how to retain them. You've probably heard many people state that the easiest customer to sell to is the one you already have. Your existing customers have already signed up for your email list, added their credit card information to your website and tested what you have to offer. In doing so, they're starting a relationship with you and your brand. Help them feel as good about that relationship as possible.
Start by utilizing these strategies, which include investing in your customer service and getting personal, but realize your work will never be done. You'll constantly be competing for these customers in the marketplace, and you can never simply rest on your laurels. Keep researching the market, hiring good people and making a superior product and you'll be on your way to building the empire you always dreamed about.
1. Sell convenience.Customers like comfort and accessibility. So, your brand has to continually find innovative ways to make your products and services available and accessible to customers on the go.
Take a look at Starbucks, the coffee giant. It continually ups its game, with innovative ways to ensurecustomer comfort. For instance, its Mobile Order & Pay feature in its app fairly screams “ease.” That strategy alone is worth paying a few extra bucks for and likely to ensure brand loyalty.
2. Pre-engage with your prospects.No matter how focused your online marketing efforts are, or how fine-tuned your website, today’s prospects rarely fill out forms or order services after getting their first impression. The noise is just too big; too much else is going on; too little time has gone by during that first visit, to build trust.
B2B sales intelligence tools like Infusion Soft, Leadberry or Marketo solve this problem by helping businesses to pre-engage with their clients and follow up with anonymous B2B visitors. According to Adam Jankovits, the CEO of B2B Lead generation company Leadberry, “On average, only 1.5 percent of first-time visitors will convert on your website; thus 98.5 percent of your online marketing spend can be easily a waste of money, if you are in the B2B sector and looking for clients to come to your door. Treating anonymous B2B visitors as prospects and reaching out to them via social media is a rapidly growing trend in the B2B sector”
Additionally, in B2B marketing, focusing on accounts rather than leads is needed to gain focus (this is called account-based marketing). Rather than wait for potential clients to interact with your business, your business can use account-based-marketing to select companies it would like to close and proactively go after them.
3. Get personal.Know your customers on a personal level. Humanize your brand; let customers relate and interact with it like it’s a person. Get to know what matters to them. Send them messages on important dates like birthdays. Send them emails and newsletters and start those communications with their first names.
For long-term customers, send personalized and brandedmaterials to continually place your brand into their personal space; sustain their top-of-mind awareness. This can also inspire referrals to friends and family to experience your brand.
4. Let your corporate social responsibility be impactful.Find needs that people are interested in filling, and try to fill those needs. TOMS has mastered the art of this strategy with its “one for one” campaign, where every pair of shoes sold translates to another pair being given to charity or someone in need.
TOMS has given away over 60 million pairs of new shoes and converted new customers into brand loyalists. This social impact angle is definitely a welcome development and one everyone wishes more brands would adopt.
5. Implement customer feedback.Feedback should be taken seriously and implemented as much as the business can manage. Once feedback has been implemented, communicate with customers that you listened to them and as a result, added the new, suggested feature, or eliminated an old one.
In a recent chat I had with Jean-Sebastian Pelland, director of Eland Cables on how his company implements customer feedback so as to ensure customer satisfaction, he said: “The customer feedback we received saw a premium placed on quality and service -- something we never compromise on.
"So we went to the lengths of establishing an in-house testing laboratory in order to offer additional quality assurance. Understandably, customers like to feel they are getting the best deal available; and delivering a premium product at a great price with expert technical support is our way of doing that.”
Then there are companies like Nike that have totally rocked the customer feedback feature. Nike created a separate Twitter account, @NikeSupport, just for responding to customer inquiries and issues. The company's Nike Support is dedicated to all things customer service, making it easier for customers to reach out when they have a problem or a question they want answered.
The company's support staff are also quick to respond.
6. Create amazing experiences.Continuously create out-of-this world experiences that are unique to you. These could be in-store, at trade shows, at global or local events or through product interaction.
A company that does this well is Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola has continuously shown this through campaigns like its campus-friendly twist, where a Coca-Cola bottle can be opened only by the matching bottle of a friend, and its unwrap a gift bottle program, where many people got Christmas bowties from their Coca-Cola bottles.
Related: Customer Loyalty 3.0 Is Never About Transactions. It's About Getting to Know Your Customers.
In conclusion, your customers are primarily concerned about two things: your product quality and good communication. If your brand can offer a top-notch product while holding things together at the social media interactive level, as well as the social impact one, you won't have a loyalty problem.