Tracey Loslo Marketing and Business Development Professional
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With little-to-no-budget and zero clientele, how do you develop a local business, generating a viable profit, within two weeks?
The old fashioned way - a lot of hard work and creative thinking while wearing many different hats.
Direct Marketing...
It has long been accepted that a well designed and executed direct marketing campaign is an extremely effective form of marketing with above average ROI. To minimize cost, I designed, produced, and distributed all my own materials. The door knocker was the most effective tactic with lawn and cart signage serving a strong supporting role.
To ensure high recall, each component displayed a standardized colour, design and messaging theme.
Web presence...
All businesses should be diligent about how and where they invest their resources. That said, a micro-preneur needs to be hyper vigilant.
Although I was confident my direct marketing strategy would create a viable backlog of work, I knew suppliers required evidence of a legitimate business before they would extend a competitive discount to iDIG. All factors in mind, I decided to invest a few hours in designing a very simple website to serve as the legitimacy piece. As an addendum and potential future revenue generation tool I also created both a Twitter and a Facebook account for the business. Social marketing can certainly become a black hole of time, thus extreme discipline was applied to how much time was spent in on-going contributions.
Increasing wallet share visa-vi customer appreciation ...
Giving back: Discounts and specials are all well and good but they lack the ability to create a 'warm and fuzzy in the moment' experience. For all of my clients I did a little extra work a.k.a. exceeded their expectations, during every service visit. This gave me the opportunity to engage them in a 'warm and fuzzy in the moment' experience, visa-vi chatting with them and letting them know what I did, each and every time they experienced my work. It was tremendously effective. Additionally, unlike an '11th call is free' type promotion, I was able to definitively control when the cost of the discount event would affect my bottom line.
Promotion: If there's one thing smart entrepreneurs do well, it's collaborate. I made deals with 2 BC artists that sold me small but unique garden art such as wind chimes for less than half price. In exchange, I would then tell my clients about the artists that produced the pieces and where they too could source the art.
At the end of each large project I would present my client with one of the outdoor ornaments. Without exception, they all display their gifts prominently in their outdoor spaces. This is great for me as every time a client looks at their gift they are fondly reminded of iDIG. And in the event people see them hanging in multiple yards the investment will also serve a bonus benefit of added credibility. An important note is that I purposefully chose not to brand the gifts. Not only are the pieces unique enough to be identifiable on their own, but by branding them I would have changed how the gift was perceived; diminishing the warm and fuzzy response.
Results
The combined strategy of utilizing the above strategies and tactics resulted in 100% booked capacity over the entire service season and healthy discounts from all of my suppliers. iDIG was a great success!
Contact Tracey for an interview.
Visit the pages brand development and tradeshow launch for more samples.
