Recently I had the opportunity to do some Marketing business with about 20 small businesses owned and operated by people who recently immigrated to the United States. These people were excited to talk to me, both about their own business and the emerging business coming to their neighborhood. They were more than willing to help in any way they could. They shared their own business practices and the possibilities for the new business coming in. There opinion was more business, more opportunity for everyone!
On the other hand there was six more business, owned and operated by citizens of the United States running a small business. These business owners were just as busy yet in their minds they were too busy to hear anything more than “Hi!”. So were these people more successful? Were they more swamped with customers than the others? Maybe they were expecting lots of new business soon and preparing for it? The answer was no to all of the above.
So what was missing? Pure, down to earth, eye to eye Marketing. This has been the age old practice of good will that has been going strong since the beginning of time. It doesn’t mean you will make a sale but you look approachable, you look like the kind of person who would give you a fair shake should you need their business in the future. The business owner has spread the word about how they do business that will ripple on for months, even years into the future, and it was free!
Large business has begun the practices of good Marketing that is quite free to do as well. Surveys go out and show concern about how the customer felt about their recent experience at their business. How clean, well lit, stocked was their store? Did they receive good customer service? What kind of speed was the transaction handled at? This is all free marketing.Obviously the small business owner hasn’t learned this yet.
So why am I mentioning this here, where people are doing business online? Free marketing can be practiced online. What is the response time for people who just have a question? Do you treat everyone as if they are a customer, whether they might buy something or not? Do you thank them for their question? Do you invite them back?
Some huge marketing tips however: Never set a program for automatic responses after a purchase! This is a major mistake some large business make. Unless you are watching where and to whom these auto responses are going and why you can very well accidently insult your customer, or future customer!
A marketing professional recently commented on his experience with Sears. The same thing happened to me at Macys. He had recently canceled his order with Sears because he found out the item he had ordered was mistakenly listed incorrectly. It wasn’t what he was looking for and it hadn’t shipped yet either. He’d been waiting for it much longer than he was told it would take so he went in online and canceled it.
Buy this time the automated process wheels started rolling and couldn’t be stopped, obviously. The “Thank you for your order” email went out, followed by the “How did you like the item, online ordering process, and the would you use this service again” survey went out. It was all automated, designed to operate without the thought of an exception to the rule!
Needless to say it is a poor attempt at feigning good customer service by reducing the expense of doing great customer service. How many times have we heard, “Oh that’s just an automated form”? That’s
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