Hand Out Free Gifts

If you want guaranteed attention, offer a free gift. These can include: a free gift for a particular amount or item of purchase, a free gift for responding to a direct-mail solicitation, or a free gift of a second item with the purchase of a first - a more tantalizing and successful version of the two-for-one sale.

Also consider handing out specialty gifts to prospects and customers: free pens, scratchpads, mugs, T-shirts, and other items printed with your company name, address, phone number, and business slogan. To explore the range of gifts available, consult some of the "Advertising Specialties" firms listed in the Yellow Pages. Ask the reps to suggest gifts that have been used successfully in your industry and pay special attention to new, just-introduced items whose advanced design or technology may appeal strongly to your customers. Select gifts based on their appropriateness to your customers and your business, quality of construction, and tastefulness of design.

Use Coupons as an Advertising Vehicle

Coupons offer a proven method of generating trial. Enclose them in invoices. Hand them out at the cash register. Distribute them through your sales force. Include them in a coupon pack prepared by a direct-mail advertising house.

If you decide to produce your own coupon, study samples around you to see how they're written and designed to specify the product and trumpet the savings boldly and unequivocally. If you give your coupon an expiration date, which you should do to encourage prompt use, make sure it's conspicuous.

Like all other forms of advertising, coupons work best with repetition. You'll need to try four or five, issued on a regular basis, to know how well they're working; measure their effectiveness simply by counting the number redeemed.

Build Awareness Through Sweepstakes or Contests

Sweepstakes and contests provide exciting ways to build awareness of your products, services, and company, as well as produce the goodwill that giveaways naturally inspire. Whether entrants will win a free lunch at your restaurant or a free week in Paris (perhaps co-sponsored by a local travel agent), you must check the legalities with your lawyer before you start.

Then plan out your promotion step by step, from how customers will enter and how entries will be handled to whether you'll award prizes below the grand-prize category. For example, will everyone win something just for entering?

Finally, create an entry form and eye-catching collection box and advertise with flyers, mailers, banners, store signs, newspaper ads, or radio spots. If you'll collect entries in your store, place the box at the back of the premises so everybody must pass through your merchandise to reach it.

Afterwards, generate publicity about the winners and display photocopies of all resulting news stories at your business.

Be Creative with Telephone-hold Marketing

In most businesses, callers will at some point be placed on hold; play a telephone-hold audiotape that, over background music, talks about your products, services, or even your company itself. Besides helping the time pass faster, tapes can answer callers' questions and even inform them of products or services they need but didn't know you provide.

To find a company to produce your telephone-hold tape, check the Yellow Pages under "Telecommunications-Telephone Equipment, Services & Systems." Most firms provide everything you need - produced tape, hookups, and phone equipment - for a monthly fee.

Sell with Store Signs

Use interior signs to tell customers about the goods and services you offer, such as free delivery, free alterations, or free trials. If you stock a specialty line, like environmentally- safe products, point it out. If you've just received merchandise with a high-demand feature, let customers know.

Signs also provide an easy way to answer customers' most commonly-asked questions. Post explanatory labels to help customers differentiate among various models. Write out shelf signs describing special features that make products outstanding values or unique in their field, or telling customers where to find accessories.

Use signs, in short, to tout your company's competitive advantages and to make shopping easier, more informative, and more motivating for your customers.

Act Now to Extend Your Seasonal Sales

Is your business seasonal? If so, suggests business writer Carol June, utilize year-round marketing to improve your sales. Before the season, stimulate repeat sales by sending coupons to current customers for upcoming purchases or offering special deals on early orders. After the season, use follow-up mailings or phone calls to stay in touch with customers and encourage their loyalty. Maintain interest with an end-of-season or off-season sale of leftover merchandise.

In the longer term, consider a second-season business or product line that would be both a logical extension of your current operation and appeal to your customers. A holiday fruitcake company, for example, might branch out into year-round baked goods, or a ski shop into camping gear. If you're a retail firm, expand not your season but your customer base by adding a catalog or direct-mail wholesale operation.

To sum up, marketing is a 365-days-a-year job; it demands persistent attention in satisfying customers' needs. Equally important, it requires a constant program of efforts to develop your customer base and stimulate sales - a program initiated and implemented most effectively by putting your own twist on direct, hard-working, tried-and-true ideas such as the 12 described above. It doesn't take novelty or large sums of money to succeed in marketing; first and foremost, it takes action.

You've Got to Put the WOW Back in Business

As a private ticket agency now selling 250,000 tickets a year to theater, sports, and concert events throughout the U.S. and abroad, Ticket City in Austin, Texas has grown explosively since Randy Cohen (above) founded it in 1990.

"You've got to put the wow back in business," says Cohen of his marketing methods. "You've got to plan your work and work your plan."

That means promoting the customer's interests and encouraging repeat business right from the start. For example, Ticket City doesn't sell just "tickets," but the "best seats" available. Staffers call back every single customer to say, "I want to make sure you had a fantastic time" at whatever event the customer attended. They may also phone to offer discount tickets to this year's version of events that customers attended last year.

Though he advertises widely, usually in exchange for complimentary tickets, Cohen depends most on his telephone staff, making sure all are friendly, engaging, and energetic, as well as deftly assertive about asking for the sale.

We Put the Money into the Quality

Since 1983, when he and his mother founded Gimmee Jimmy's Cookies, Inc. in West Orange, New Jersey, James Libman has been uncompromising about the quality of cookie preparation and ingredients. He believes that once customers taste them, Gimmee Jimmy's cookies sell themselves.

Accordingly, Libman's marketing strategy has always centered on free samples. He launched Gimmee Jimmy's with the help of extensive sampling, including his mother's all-weather stints outside supermarkets until a large regional chain began carrying the line. Currently, he also sends out cookies as thank you customer gifts to dozens of New Jersey auto dealers, banks, brokerages, and other businesses.

The company works actively in the community. Besides belonging to several chambers of commerce, the firm donates its seconds to churches and schools - especially schools for the deaf, where Libman, who is deaf, often lectures to enraptured students.

Revenues have grown from $25,000 to $1 million, generated by sales in supermarkets, CompuServe, and fueled by inexpensive sampling. "We put the money into the quality," explains office manager Fran Stack. "And," she adds, "it shows."

It All Starts at the Grassroots Level

"It all starts at the grassroots level with the employees," says Allen, explaining Petersen Farms' success since 1992, when he and his cousin Raymond Petersen took over the ailing family-run ice cream and restaurant chain in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Believing that no marketing plan could succeed until employees were working together for the same goals, Petersen focused first on improving morale. He revived the old company newsletter and ran a newsletter-naming contest - won by the entry "Monthly Moos." He invited employees to repaint the plant to their taste, which produced a pink, purple, and cow-spotted decor.

When it came to marketing, in-house creativity also prevailed, resulting in colorful, high-profile special events. For example, Petersen Farms transported the "world's largest ice cream sandwich" to downtown Hartford and distributed free tastes. It developed a menu of items named for local radio personalities and donated 10 percent of revenues to charities. It organized a hospital fund raiser in which hospital teams raced to assemble chocolate-covered ice cream sandwiches; the chocolate flew.

"Use your imagination," advises Petersen, "and you can do everything big companies can do, but on a far more economical scale."

Your Best Customers Are Your Existing Customers

Steve and Maryellen Stofelano, owners of Mansion Hill Inn in Albany, New York's inner-city Mansion District, have taken on two tasks: renewing their neighborhood and promoting their inn.

In the neighborhood, the couple's efforts at reviving their street and hiring local residents have raised property values, won them a municipal award and made Mansion Hill Inn a place where guests can feel safe.

As for the inn itself, they've focused their marketing on their award-winning dining room. The Stofelanos serve only New York State wines, for example - a move that, in the state capital, has brought them notice and acclaim. The couple also offers numerous special-event dinners: wine-tasting dinners, cigar-smokers-only dinners, and "Mansion suppers" featuring the cuisines of their Polish, German, Italian, and African-American neighborhood.

In addition, using a mailing list of diners who sign up on comment cards that accompany dinner checks, the Stofelanos stay in touch with guests by sending notices of dinners or promotions like summertime room discounts for Albany residents. "Never forget," comments Steve, "that your best customers are your existing customers."

Page 2 of 2