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Printed newsletters are a really easy way to contact your prospective and current customers. They can even increase your sales while reducing advertising costs. Research shows newsletters get four times the readership of adverts or brochures, and customers are seven times more likely to buy from you than an average member of the public. A good newsletter can improve name recognition and brand awareness, establish your authority in your field, and differentiate your business from the competition.

Make the layout of your newsletter inviting. If it looks too packed with information it may seem hard work to read. Break up the copy with plenty of space and keep articles short. Use intriguing titles or ones that suggest the article provides quick and easy shortcuts. Also use photographs or cartoons on the cover to draw people’s attention.

Choose your articles carefully so that each one promotes the correct image of your business. Decide whether the article is to reflect your expertise, customer care or some other aspect of your business. If you are not sure which areas are important and of interest to your customers slip a survey into your newsletter.

You should start the article writing process by deciding what specific results you want from the article. It may be to introduce a new product or service, or to counteract what a competitor is claiming, or to highlight why a customer might be interested in a special offer you have.

A good newsletter will have a longer shelf life than adverts and are more likely to be passed around to prospective customers. Get a balance between generic articles that would be of interest to your wider client base and those specifically about your products and services. Do not waste effort and space producing articles that are unrelated to your field. Also check that the views expressed in articles are unlikely to offend your customer base.

Try to keep copy simple and as jargon free as possible. Use short sentences. Involve the reader by asking questions. How could your business benefit from this advice?

A profile of a customer can show how your product or service is used, the results that it can produce, why someone would purchase from you, and what they are planning to do in the future with your assistance. If they are prestigious clients the article will give a positive reflection of your business as well as providing them with some useful and free PR.

Generate new leads by offering a free subscription to your newsletter on your business’s marketing materials. Emphasize the news content and useful advice, and how it could benefit your prospective customer. Only a few of those who sign up for the newsletter will be time wasters. It is possible that as many as 80% could be converted to customers within six months. Without the constant contact that the newsletter offers they could drift into the arms of a competitor.

As a small business owner, you may be considering the implementation of a “refer a friend” marketing program. There are several reasons why this is a wise move.

Basic marketing theory offers that word of mouth marketing is one of the most effective, and least expensive, forms of business promotion. Word of mouth marketing occurs any time one of your current customers or clients recommends your business to someone else, who then, on the basis of that recommendation, decides to visit your business as well. Lead generation (getting the potential customer to walk through the door) is often the most time-intensive element of marketing. Once the potential customer has chosen to “walk through the door”, it becomes much easier to convert them to a paying client.

In this form, word of mouth marketing costs almost nothing to implement, and if your business is continually recommended, it, obviously will continue to grow.

There are several forms that this marketing by referral program could take. One is that of “refer a friend”, which, as it sounds, is based on the idea that your current customers can be rewarded for referring their friends to your business.

When considering the implementation of this kind of marketing strategy, there are several issues that must be considered. First, consider the lifetime value of a business customer. This value is computed by multiplying the income received by the number of times in a year it is received by how many years the customer remains in your business. For a business consultant, for example, the income received might be $400 per hour, the number of hours per year might be 100, and the average length of the client relationship might be 10 years. So, for the consultant in this scenario, the lifetime value of a customer would be $400/hour x 100 hours/year x 10 years = lifetime value of $400,000. This figure represents the amount that the business can spend to attract and retain a client and still remain profitable. It also implies that if the business can attract and retain clients for less than this amount (such as using a marketing by referral program), the business’ profitability can increase significantly.

The first step in setting up a marketing referral program is to understand the lifetime value of your customer. This will indicate how much should be spent to attract new customers.

The second step is to tell your existing customers that their referrals would be valued and appreciated. A simple way to begin is to include a statement about this on all customer-facing materials, including brochures, invoices, and receipts. Many businesses create special “tell a friend” cards, which allow someone to gift a friend with a service or product.

For example, a beauty salon may create “tell a friend” cards, and ask their current customers to pass these out to friends who might want to try the salon. In this model, the current customer is able to be generous by sharing a “gift” with a friend, who may, ultimately, sample the salon and decide to stay on as a customer. For the price of a printed business card, and the cost of the service or product, businesses can generate hundreds of new leads, very cost-effectively. The key to this strategy, though, is that the business must offer a product or service with high perceived value and low actual cost. An example might be a free haircut, or a mini-facial, or something similar.

The third step of this process is to define an internal system or structure for rewarding clients for their referrals. The higher the price points in your business, the more generous the rewards should be. Consider creating a rewards schema which gives customers greater and greater rewards for every two or three new customers referred. Following through with the beauty salon example, the first referral might entitle the referrer a free haircut, but the tenth referral might entitle that referrer to a full spa treatment.

Keeping track of referrals may be best done in some kind of database or with customer tracking software. Build a referral tree to understand which customers are referring the most new business. Be sure to thank them promptly for their first referral, and don’t forget to continue to reward them for sharing your business with others.

No matter what kind of business you run, a referral marketing program can increase profitability.

The success of any store that sells products or services relies heavily on traffic. Whether walk-in, telephone, or web site visitors, each person that in some way contacts you has a value to your business. Yes, even the problem people, the random visitors, and the tag-along husbands have a value.

Being aware of how much each person is worth in dollars is extremely important. This will help you maximize your income while minimizing your marketing expenses.

Most business owners do not take the time to determine the value of each visitor. Why? Because business owners may be experts in furniture, hardware, plumbing, or teeth, but they hate the paperwork side of business ownership.

Let us take a look at a quick and easy way to assign a dollar value to each person who calls or visits your business. And how it can increase your income this year, as it has for so many others.

Very simply, take the total sales each week. Divide it by the number of people that visited and called you. This assigned value will become more accurate and more important each week. You add this week’s visitors to all previous visitors, and this week’s sales to all previous sales.

If you have a walk-in business, such as a furniture store, put a traffic counter on the door. If your door is used for both entry and exit, divide results by two to avoid counting the same people twice.

Keep track of the phone calls too. Have a pad by the phone to record the name and phone number of each caller. This is just good business sense. You, no doubt, are doing this already.

Now, for example, let us say that for the month of May you had 3000 walk-ins and 500 phone calls. Add these together for a total of 3500 visitors. Your sales for the month was $33,000. Divide $33,000 by 3500. You have now established that each visitor is worth $9.43 in gross sales.

Now you have an accurate way to measure your in-store marketing strategies. You can quickly see the results in the rise or fall of the “per person” value in sales. These tactics might include how you arrange your merchandise. Also, suggesting additional items that will complement the visitor’s purchase. Also, setting up specific displays with colorful signs or banners tied in with special or seasonal themes.

Be creative. Scout out your competition and similar stores in other towns. Here are a couple proven strategies that are very effective.

Hamburger stores have found that offering a “super-size” package dramatically increases the per person value. They have found that it is much easier to get additional money out of people who are already committed to spending money with you than to sell a new customer.

One grocery store, when setting up an Italian dinner display, will include all the accessories in the display. Wine from the liquor department, French bread from their bakery, and Parmesan cheese from the dairy department. The customers love it and it dramatically increases sales.

Ok - you have optimized your in-store marketing. Now you can look at buying more traffic with external marketing - such as media advertising.

But, before you spend a penny, you need to take the “per person” value one step further. You need to establish the per person gross profit.

The average percentage of profit needed to stay alive may vary from 200% for a jewelry store to 2% for a grocery store. Most stores and service businesses average around a 40% margin. We will use 40% for this scenario.

Let us say you have increased the per person value to $14.90 gross sales by fine-tuning your in-store marketing. Your margin of profit is 40%, so each person is worth $5.96 in gross profit. Now you know for sure you cannot spend more than $5.96 per person to profitably bring them into your store.

For example, you spend $1000 on a TV advertising campaign. It increases traffic by 200 people. You have spent $5.00 per visitor. The advertising paid for itself, but barely shows a profit. Your next marketing effort may be a $1000 newspaper program. It brings in additional 300 visitors. You paid only $3.33 per visitor. This would be quite profitable. Obviously, this is one marketing plan that you will want to repeat over and over again.

Additionally, knowing the value of each person in gross profit will help you eliminate expensive junk marketing. Junk marketing includes advertising on phone book covers, posters, maps, and the like. In fact, yellow pages are quickly becoming a poor investment.

For example, a salesperson asks you to put an ad on a fishing contest poster. Quite likely, it may only bring in one or two visitors, if any. You wisely determine that the most you can spend on this would then be about $12. Anything more should be considered a donation, not a marketing investment.

Numbers not your cup of tea? Follow the example of Henry Ford. Do only what you do best, and wisely hire out the rest. Train and empower a family member or fellow employee to become essentially involved in the success of your business. They can take care of tracking the numbers and you can do the brain work.

Establishing a value for each visitor is simple. It is essential. It is powerful. It puts you in total control, no matter what the economic cycles throw your way. It gives you a way to measure the value in dollars of every new marketing idea you implement.