There are many ways to market your embroidery business but first I want to start out by giving you a few pointers about increasing the sales to your current customers and then I will talk about prospecting for new customers. It is much easier and more cost effective to market to your current customers than always trying to find new ones! This is the first step in starting to market your embroidery business.
Increasing customer sales with your current customer base is all about creating relationships. Creating good customer relationships is the most important duty that you have as a business owner and this is something that does not cost a lot of money. Many times it is the little unexpected things that we do that mean the most and keeps those customers coming back to our business over and over!
I purchased a program from a large company and was shocked when I received a handwritten Thank you note in the mail. I have to tell you, I was extremely impressed at this gesture! Just a simple thank you card that only took the salesperson a couple of minutes to write meant a lot to me and I will remember that the next time that I decide to order another program.
Here are some simple ways for you to increase your customer sales.
- Offer Exceptional Customer Service
- More Low Cost-High Profit Services To Your Existing Customers
- Build A Relationship With Existing And Former Customers
- Plan A Customer Appreciation Night
- Create A Web Presence
- Offer More Than One Price Level Of Products
There are several Low Cost Methods of prospecting for new customers.
- Networking Off Line and On Line
- Donate Products & Services to Charity for Fund Raising Events
- Ask For Referrals
- Attend Trade shows in Your Niche
- Offer to Trade Your Products & Services
- Press Releases
I will go over each of the simple ways to increase your customer sales and explain how to prospect for new customers. They can be done at the same time and many of them can be done on a daily basis as you are working within your business.
Concentrate your strengths against your competitor's relative weaknesses.
~Bruce Henderson~
Make Your Business Stand Out From The Crowd
Is there a service or a process that you can offer your customers that they cannot get from any of your competition? What is it that you can do to be more efficient than the competition? It is usually better to focus on being different in a particular market rather than trying to compete directly. Find a unique strategy or a way to position your products or your business differently in your current market place.
Spend some time educating your customers about the benefits, services and value that they will be receiving by doing business with you. Point out to them what you are doing that the competition is not doing. You do not have to say that the competition is not doing such and such; you just have to point out what you are doing that makes you different or better!
You cannot compete with the big manufacturers or embroiderers that have many multi-head machines when you are only a small shop with one or two heads. Don't even try. You must focus on what you do best in your smaller market. If you focus on improving one step or one process that can make you more efficient then this alone will help to make you more profitable!
Those large shops normally are not offering the type of customer service that you can offer. This can set you far above the larger shops and help to increase your customer sales. I have seen this many times. Many of the larger shops have systems all set that they will not steer away from, and they are usually profit focused instead of customer focused.
In order to be successful in this business, you must be customer focused. The profits will follow if that is the case! By finding your own unique way to stand out in the crowd, you will increase your customer sales naturally.
Offering Exceptional Customer Service to all of your embroidery customers will make you stand out and is extremely important in this competitive market place today!
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