Are You Going To Your Customers Or Are You Waiting For Them To Come To You?

Good Morning Everybody,

Just Chillin’ Wednesday turned out to be pretty fillin’ Wednesday instead. We were out the door fairly early and headed up to La Jolla for a quick walk around the galleries and the beaches – normal tourist stuff.

We then headed up the road to Torrey Pines State Park for a quick peek.  Then it hit me – we were so close to Del Mar – and the Del Mar race track. The track was built by Bing Crosby, Pat O’Brien, and Jimmy Durante in 1937 – here is the history of the track right here. Hey, Sea Biscuit raced here! I decided to take my little Filly to the afternoon races!

 I have to say, even being a Kentucky boy, I haven’t been to a horse race – I know hard to believe – that’s what the  people said at the Del Mar track too.  But, before you knew it, LaDawn and I were in the swing of things – watching the houses parade around the paddock before the race, checking out the odds, and placing our bets.

I’ll tell you, it turned out to be a great day and a lot cheaper than Las Vegas for a good time.  And, we came home a whopping $15 richer for our efforts!

Anyway, time to get on with today’s Business Day Thursday – here we go…

Are You Going To Your Customers Or Are You Waiting For Them To Come To You?

One of my favorite things to do at DigitalProTalk is to post the Business Day Thursday episodes. In ongoing conversations with my staff, we discuss how we can improve polices and practices  to reach out to our own customers more effectively. Missed opportunities may happen but we need to minimize them.  Golden opportunities should never be missed.

How many golden opportunities do we let pass us by on a weekly basis? I think too many.  Why, because we are not disciplined enough to play like the BIG boys.

Hit the “Read More…” link below for the rest of the story.

Recently I was just taking a break from my regular day-to-day activities at the studio. I had pushed my chair away from the desk I was just relaxing for a minute. It wasn't 90 seconds later until I heard my Outlook alert telling that I had new mail.

When I checked, it was from Tiger Direct - one of the largest computer equipment resellers on the net. Interestingly enough, I always go and check their latest weekly specials. I do the same for Micro Center and Amazon too.

Now many of you might think that this is just nasty spam filtering through my spam filter and why would anybody want to even look at those e-mails. Well, what can I say -  I'm a sucker for a good deal and have them listed as friendly sites. Just recently, for instance, Micro Center was offering a 2 Terabyte Western Digital My Book $179.  "What a deal," I thought and purchased two of them.

Anyway, the whole process got me thinking. How many of us in our own small businesses are regularly reaching out to our clients letting them know about our "weekly" specials. Of course, we have to have weekly specials to begin with and most of us don't because we are so "old school."  

Folks, "old school" doesn't cut it any more.  There should be no problem at all for us to set up our own "weekly specials" - 1/2 price on children's specials; monthly birthday specials, holiday promotional specials, baby specials, you get the idea.

It's even easier to get the word out to your clients if you just work at it.  If we could become as disciplined (automated) as some of these big retailers, I bet we could raise our level of inquiries and business substantially. Imagine this -- we rigorously collect the e-mails of our current clients, their family members, and any regular inquiries that may call the studio.

Then we put those email addresses to work for us by regularly notifying our clients of any weekly, monthly or promotional specials.  This is a "piece of cake" with an easy e-mailed newsletter.  One of the best and least expensive newsletter campaigns can be set up at Marathon Press where they make eMail Marketing easy.  Here is the link right here. 

For only $.015/email you can't afford not to be doing this in your studio.  By the way, here is an earlier article I did on a similar topic entitled, Business Day Thursday: Out Of Sight, Out of Mind, Out of Business! right here.

Even if you only have a handful of clients, this is the time to start.  Your list will build and your business will grow.  Just add the discipline to your weekly routine and you've just added a little more high octane fuel to your business plan.  

Hey everybody, that wraps it for me today.  We've only got a few more days in San Diego and are working on enjoying every minute.  Remember my 30-minute-only-working-on-the-blog promise to LaDawn – so I'm out of here.  See ya' tomorrow.  -David