Every eight seconds during an average American business day someone starts another business. To survive, each of those businesses needs some kind of a competitive edge. That edge can take many forms, but the most sustainable long-term advantage comes from developing, maintaining, and promoting a unique selling proposition or USP.
Achieving superior marketing, however, means a lot more than just having a catchy slogan or clever advertisements. It means improving more of the mundane details involved in customer interactions to the point where potential customers always think of you first, even if only by a second or two. Marketing is one of the biggest challenges that owners of small businesses face.
Important research has been done recently that quantifies the huge advantage a firm gets by working to retain customers rather than just marketing to get new ones. The latest term being used to describe this strategy is customer relationship management, or CRM. Mr. Francese thinks it should be called CS for common sense, because it must be pretty obvious that if you take good care of your best customers they will keep coming back and save you the big expense of constantly looking for new ones.
Written for the small-business marketer, this book explains major trends and how to determine their impact on your trading area, where to find the data you need to make good marketing decisions—often at little or no cost, and how you can use the internet to build your business. It offers dozens of suggestions for finding new customers and winning more of your existing customers’ future business.
• Tips for marketing in an information age • Latest consumer trend information • How to find and keep customers • Pros and cons of internet marketing • How to evaluate your trading area • What you can learn from you customers • Marketing success within your reach
See a Sample Chapter (pdf) by Peter Francese ISBN: 0-9671439-8-5;220 pages, Hardcover Item # 1008 Publish Date 5/1/02 Price: $27.50
