Margaret Matthew Marketing Consultant

The most important tool in your marketing tool box is YOU!  Your attitude and personal communications will win or lose you business.

As a business owner, you must genuinely want to please your customers.  Businesses that are contemptuous of their customers in private will never succeed. And in public, negative behaviour can be disastrous.  I once witnessed someone in the leisure industry use a conference to berate a public sector organisation in front of 200 potential new clients, instead of using the opportunity to sell the benefits of her products.  A retailer I know drove away his customers by focusing on the difficulty of parking in front of his store. And we all know the famous Ratner story. People will turn away from negativity, and take their trade with them.  During hard times like the present, ensure you and your staff are positive and upbeat and focused on doing the best you can for your customer.

The easiest way to ensure you are not being negative is to listen instead! People buy from people they like and trust.  People love to be listened to, therefore they will like you more and are more likely to buy from you, and recommend you. The other great thing about being a good listener is that you will learn a lot.  Is your product or service what the customer needs in these changing times?  Ask them and find out.  If you are not getting word of mouth and repeat business, you need to listen to your customers more. If you are, find out what you are doing right, and keep doing it!  Listening will also help you find out about trends in your marketplace and what the competition are doing.  Don't make the mistake of thinking that people will rate your business more if you appear to know all the answers.

Any talking you do should focus on explaining the benefits of your product or service. One of the biggest marketing mistakes is to focus on the details of the product or service, rather than the benefits it offers customers.  People will only buy from you when they understand how they are going to benefit from what you are offering them. 

Word of mouth marketing works by making new contacts as well as from your existing satisfied customers. Even if you have just started up, it is a way to get those first few customers.  Ask people for their business cards and you have a new list of contacts to keep in touch with. So get out there and mingle and practice your listening skills! 

For some businesses this is all the marketing they ever need to do.