Tag Archives: Recession

What Do You Do When Your Marketing Isn’t Working?

Posted on 07/27/2011 by admin
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The other day I heard a fabulous story about a Lexus dealership in the US. Lexus are fairly upmarket cars and they had been hit badly by the recession and in act lots of dealerships were closing down. Their usual marketing involved advertising what cars they had and up til now that had been enough but no longer so they decided to try something new. They studied their market well and came up with a few neighbourhoods that were likely to buy a Lexus and then went door to door asking people i they wanted to give one o their cars a test drive or a whole day, of course nearly everyone said yes, then the ones that liked the cars were invited to borrow them for a whole week, again, of course they loved the cars and at the end of the week were really reluctant to get back in their old cars because they’d just spent a week driving a lovely shiny new lexus. This ‘out of the box’ marketing idea led to a sales conversion of 62% on all the people that had borrowed a car for a week! And the best thing is it cost the dealership virtually nothing just time, because the cars were sat on the forecourt doing nothing anyway!

This is a great example that marketing doesn’t have to be expensive and when times are tough the answer ISN’T to just do more of what you are already doing. I speak to many people that are having a tough time with their business and they tell me they are doing advertising with glossy magazines but it isn’t working and their solution to the problem? Increase their advertising! This makes NO sense at all. If something isn’t working then no matter how much more effort into it, it still wont work! The answer is to think of something else, try something you HAVEN’T already done. This may involve stretching your comfort zone such as doing face to face networking or making calls etc but if it gets you the business you want then I’m sure you will see the advantage in doing it.

The most effective way to market your business is to have MANY strings to your bow to bring you business, not just one because when that dries up then you are stuck! List now how many ways you are effectively attracting customers to your business, if its less than 6 ways then you REALLY need to come up with some more!

 

Claire x0x

 

If you need help converting enquiries into clients, attracting new business and effortlessly generating more profit then join my Wedding Wealth Program, 100% of my clients have said that they were glad they did!

 

Are You Running a Hobby or a Business?

Posted on 07/21/2011 by admin
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If you are in business then correct me if I’m wrong but I’m betting you are in business to make money, right? So why feel guilty that some brides cannot afford your prices? I hear it all the time, people are scared to have high prices because they think that they will not make as many sales, well I can tell you now, whether we are in a recession or not there are plenty and I mean PLENTY of brides out there that have loads of money to spend on their weddings. And the good thing about marketing to THESE brides is that you have less competition!  Let everyone else clamour and jostle for the budget brides, down there you are competing with the mass market players which these days even include the likes of Tesco, BHS and Amazon and if you think you can compete with those guys then good luck with that.

The other end of the scale not only do you have far less competition but you actually have to do less work! Yes, thats right not more work, but LESS work! This is because your prices are so much higher. When I was watching the apprentice this series (and other series actually) it always amazes me that when they are choosing products to sell to big retailers they always go for something fairly cheap. This series the back pack was in fact a real winner and I’ve since seen it on a number of websites but I was amazed that they completely disregarded the electric bike which was retailing at about £1500. I know its expensive but think about it – would you rather be selling something for £30 or £1500?? Yes, sure you are (probably) going to sell more of the item worth £30 but how much more? You would have to sell 50 times the £30 product to every ONE of the £1500 – thats a hell of a lot of difference and its a WELL known fact that the hardest part is always getting NEW clients  !!

With the right marketing yu CAN target the higher end brides. When I was wedding planning the average spend on a wedding was probably about £65000 and those clients were as easy to attract as the ones that wanted to only spend £20000 and I can tell you that they required the same amount of work from me but gave me a MUCH higher pay day which meant that I earnt MORE money by working LESS – thats not a bad gig is it?

So – the moral to this blog post is – target the higher end brides people, there are plenty of them out there looking for EXACTLy what you are offering! Don’t feel sorry for the brides that can’t afford you, there are plenty of suppliers out there that they can afford – so STOP running a hobby and START running a successful, money making business…..

 

Claire xox

 

If you need help with this or any other strategy to bring you the Wedding Wealth that you deserve then contact me about the Wedding Wealth program, 100% of my clients are happy that they did!!!!