When it comes to marketing a security business, most conventional marketing ideas simply are not worth the effort because: (a) they just don’t work; or (b) they are too expensive.
The catch is that you can’t make it without marketing — it is absolutely essential to the financial health of any small business, especially in a highly specialized field like security. That’s where guerrilla marketing comes in — unconventional and inexpensive ways to boost sales and smother your competition while you grow your business.
Here are seven simple marketing techniques that you can put to work right now:
1. Create business cards that prospects will keep.
Most run-of-the-mill business cards are discarded at the recipient’s first opportunity. Instead of wasting your money on what would otherwise be a smart marketing idea, hand out something that your prospects can use. One effective alternative is a small notepad with the name and address of your business (be sure to include your e-mail address). Scratch pads are hard to come by these days and most people will hang on to and use any that are given to them. Every time a prospect jots a note, they are reminded of your business. Of course, a notepad will be more expensive than a traditional business card, but your investment in notepads will be far more likely to provide a real return on your investment.
Other possibilities include magnetic cards with local emergency phone numbers and your contact info to be attached to a fridge. Imprinted ball point pens are inexpensive these days, and who won’t hang onto a free pen? Want to find a source for these and other effective marketing items? Just enter a description in the Google search box and you will have a choice of suppliers.
2. Don’t forget that your e-mail signature is valuable real estate.
Every time you send an e-mail, or reply to one, you have a no-cost opportunity to promote your business. Almost all e-mail software allows the user to create a default signature — you have probably seen many on the e-mails you’ve received. In addition to whatever text you create, most will also allow you to include a graphic such as your company logo, or even a picture of yourself at work.
Creating a default signature is the only work required. Once you do that, your signature will automatically be included on every e-mail that you send — a no-cost means for keeping everyone on your e-mail list a recipient of your marketing effort.
3. Never let a profitable customer simply slip away.
Marketing studies over the years have indicated that it costs at least five times as much for a business to find a new customer than to keep an old one — this is one of the most powerful concepts in the business world. Make an effort to get a disgruntled or inactive customer back in the fold. It costs a lot less to than to acquire a new one.
Once you service a new customer for the first time, you have done the hard part. Now your job is to instill the notion that using your service is a wise decision. You and your employees must never lose sight of the fact that developing a new customer is a costly and difficult job. Once a stranger crosses your threshold, that first experience will determine whether that person will want to stick with you.
Once you convert a prospect into a customer, you must build your marketing program around techniques designed to make sure that he or she never has reason to seek out a competitor. In short, your existing profitable customers are your most valuable business asset — everyone in your organization should do everything possible to keep even one of them from slipping away.
4. Adopt a marketing attitude.
Almost by definition, running a highly specialized business means marketing. Some time, some place, someone may have bought the necessary equipment, signed a lease, put a sign over the door, and sat back while the phone rang off the hook with customers clamoring to do business — perhaps, but not likely.
Building a successful and growing security clientele requires an ongoing marketing program. Competitive prices alone won’t do it; good service alone won’t do it; specialized knowledge alone won’t do it. Now is the time to get out of your comfort zone. Give yourself time to market your business.
Rather than spending large sums of money, marketing a small business means investing your time, passion, and energy instead. Years ago, a popular saying offered this wisdom: Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. As countless inventors have learned, that’s a clever saying, but it has little to do with reality. After inventing “better mousetraps,” many inventors soon discovered that without marketing, their brainchildren sat languishing on store shelves.
5. Take steps to make your customers feel special.
People respond to being recognized and appreciated — especially in these rush-rush, get-the-lowest-price times. That’s the reason that it is so smart to make customer satisfaction the hallmark of your business.
Customer satisfaction is the most powerful advertising and marketing medium available. Nothing will build your business faster than customers bragging to their friends about you — and nothing will eat away at your business more relentlessly than a customer complaining to friends and business associates about an unhappy experience.
Yes, it sometimes takes money and time to resolve a customer complaint, and it can be especially trying when you feel that the complaint is not justified; however, the point to remember is that the dollars you spend resolving a complaint are marketing dollars — arguably the most effective marketing dollars that you can spend. Never allow yourself to forget that the most powerful and least costly source of new business is a personal referral, and the only sources of personal referrals are satisfied customers.
6. Measure the Results of Every Advertising Dollar.
The information in this article is intended to help you spend the least amount of advertising dollars necessary; however, most security dealers find it necessary to spend at least a few dollars on advertising.
Larger businesses can afford (or think they can afford) to waste dollars on advertising that doesn't carry its own weight, but you must make certain that every one of your advertising dollars is generating bottom-line profits.
The only way to do this is by tracking the source of every new customer. Many owners are under the impression that their Yellow Page ads are producing far more business than they actually are. Perhaps your ads are cost-effective, but the only way to determine that for sure is to ask every new customer how they happened to choose you.
Consider using newsletters to augment your regular advertising; more importantly, get on the Internet bandwagon. A skillful online presence is rapidly becoming one of the most effective and inexpensive marketing tools in today’s high-tech world. Whatever advertising media you use, it is essential that you take the time and trouble to track the results of every dollar you spend.
7. Take action now.
It almost doesn’t matter which first step you take in your guerrilla marketing program. What matters is that you do something new and creative in order to overcome the inertia that keeps many small business owners from ever reaching their full potential.
Creativity and originality are the keys to a great marketing strategy. Don’t be afraid to try something new, no matter how unorthodox it may seem at first glance. If it doesn’t work, move on and try something else.
While marketing is work away from customers — and most security dealers will agree that they don’t need more of that kind of work — it is a different sort of work. Marketing your business will be challenging, exciting, and rewarding.
William J. Lynott is a veteran freelance writer who specializes in business management as well as personal and business finance. For more information, please visit www.blynott.com.
