What's on your marketing and sales plate for 4th quarter?

[callthatgirl]

Just seeing what others are up to and what is working out there. Seems 3rd quarter has been full of larger projects and contracts/accounts, nothing really deep with marketing. But here are a few things that I have come up with to focus on. Not all are marketing ideas, but some are. Some are bigger things that I hope has a longer range pay off down the road.

Magnets. I ordered a ton of them for the 3rd store and am asking the neighborhood businesses to allow us to put them by their cash registers to help drive us business.

Sales person. I have hired on one lady and have two men in the wings to help drive larger accounts in. Sales and marketing go hand in hand! I found these sales people and they are willing to work on no base pay, commission only. Something I never thought about until the past couple of months.

New 2nd shop. Looking at a location that has two large banners available on the top of it, it's a solo location. I am soley getting it for the banner availability. It's an old Dairy Queen from the 1950's and has been a dead store for years. But it's in a great spot! No one wants it, poor thing!

IT collaborative network. I have my tech in the Cities working on this project. It's basically where we get together a network of IT Professionals that aren't doing the same work (mostly VOIP, cabling, soldering, etc) and work together to help each other with our referrals. Instead of having to go find someone, we should have it someone in our network. And hopefully help each other when we are busy, more like a trusted network.

Craigslist. Trying that avenue again since that post was put up here and others are successful.

 

[Vicenarian]

Buying a lolcat themed mascot and parading around city streets while playing the nyan cat song through a boombox and breakdancing.

 

[OldSchoolPC]

Buying a lolcat themed mascot and parading around city streets while playing the nyan cat song through a boombox and breakdancing.

I intend to sue your ass for stealing my idea! LOL.

 

[randomaccessit]

I just started dumping quite a bit of cash towards marketing. Probably double what I normally would. I ended up dishing out for some online marketing sites, Adwords, yellowbook, local paper and a few others (including a ton of flyers).

I've been trying to improve my sites SEO by updating keywords, getting a blog and getting the name out to the big search engines.

If you guys haven't heard of them, quick and dirty evaluations of your web presence can be done at websitegrader.com and getlisted.org.

I'll probably be holding off on charitable donations this month as I did a ton last month. Usually donations are a win-win (they get things free/cheap and I get new customers).

Legwork this month will probably be high as more local community boards have been put up and there are a few new businesses in town I haven't visited yet.

 

[Keith G]

I love the magnets idea! Lisa

Pens
I got this idea from you lisa, Chase (the bank with the most atm's) never has any pens, I'll post them around see what happens.

Magazines
I read a technibble article about giving away magazines to various business with waiting rooms.


Customer Follow-Up
I found a great crm (Highrise) and I've had much success, just simply following up with customers, and making sure they are still breathing.

 

[emsbronco]

I've been trying to improve my sites SEO by updating keywords, getting a blog and getting the name out to the big search engines.

If you guys haven't heard of them, quick and dirty evaluations of your web presence can be done at websitegrader.com and getlisted.org.

I just found http://www.yourbuzz.com/

they are in Beta, so the service is free for now. It allows you to plug in your business info, then it searches the common listings for reviews, etc. Connects to Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Once you plug everything in, it gives you an overall dashboard to see your web presence and social buzz.

One nice feature is the ability to track up to 5 competitors as well.

 

[jdpetrov]

Step 1: Complete work on 2 new e-commerce website orders, built on wordpress, using a custom plugin that I am authoring

Step 2: License this plugin using SPBAS and IonCube

Step 3: Profit!

And yes, I've actually figured out step 2!

But also, I plan on re-designing my own website with e-commerce so customers can view and pay invoices for remote computer work, website hosting, etc. I'm also thinking about getting a godaddy reseller account to sell domain names and SSL certificates.

A big feature I'm going to roll out is a referral system. Members get my business cards with unique coupon codes on the back to hand out. When those codes get used for the FIRST TIME on NEW CUSTOMERS, the new customer gets 10% off their first computer repair and the member gets $10 one-time for the referral. Unlimited referrals allowed leaves room for serious referral cash income for members.

 

[callthatgirl]

Oh good ideas guys! I am going to review my business and marketing plan tonight and see what I can add in. Keith, glad you like the magnet idea, I am excited to do the hand/foot in person stuff this week with them.

My webgrader went up 4 points, thanks for the reminder. Nice surprise as I have been putting in a lot of time in the website lately and it's good to see my hard work pay off there. Webgrader is quite awesome I think.

webgrader 97

Here is what they told me: (looks like I am missing 2 criticals)
The meta viewport tag tells a mobile device how to orient a page when it's loaded. It also determines if a page can be scaled larger or smaller and if it should rotate as the user rotates their mobile device.

Learn how to fix this.
Missing: Apple Icons The iPhone and iPad both allow users to add a quick link to the desktop of their device for easy access. Defining the icon that will be displayed is a great branding opportunity, as otherwise the device will just take a screenshot of your site
Learn how to fix this.

Not Found : Recent Blog Posts Do Not Have Links to Forms I'm doing this intentionally, not having a call to action as I changed up my social media marketing in the past two weeks to generate new FYI buzz and don't want to push call to action until I have been seen as a valuable resource.

In your past 5 blog posts, there were 0 links to pages with forms on them. Including relevant calls to action, with links to landing pages, into your blog posts is a great way to increase conversion rates from your blog. In your next blog post work on including a link to one of your offers.

C. Marketing AutomationNot Found : It doesn't look like you are currently using any tools to automate your marketing efforts.

I like doing it by hand still