Internet Marketing

Are you buying your clients?

Shouldn’t you be?

That’s the purpose of your “small business advertising” – to buy clients…

And they in turn pay you more than you paid for them…

That makes it an investment…

We all agree on that, so how much are you really spending on your customers?

And are you tracking your ROI (Return on Investment) from your investment?

If you shrugged at any of these questions, then no worries, you’re not alone…

Many small business owners don’t know the answers to these questions using actual hard data…

And hey, they’re still in business…

So it must not be that big of a deal, right??

It depends, how much do you want to gain from your business?

Some large and medium businesses pay more to their mid-level management than a small business owner makes.

And they end up working a lot more…

Some have made it to 6-figure incomes…

And a few more have made it to true wealth…

Personally, I view the latter group as financial and business successes…

Because even if you love what you do – why work 80 hours for 40 hour pay??

Don’t most of us launch our businesses with the hopes of enriching our lives?

If you did, then maybe we should go over how we spend our funds on our advertising…

Get an answer to how much it costs you to get a customer, because if you knew you could double your money every time…. How much would you spend??

Well, that’s the name of the game in small biz advertising…

Spend a buck this week and get back two next…

Rinse and repeat… and repeat… and repeat…

Until it stops working… Don’t get tired of an ad before it stops working… Just keep using it and measuring response until it stops making a profit…

But let’s get back on track…

We still have some things to figure out…

Like your ROI on client acquisition costs.

There’s a couple points in your business where you need to measure your ROI…

The first thing you need to know is the break even point…

You’ll end up with issues in your cash flow if you don’t find this out…

But if you know that you break even – and get that ROI of 1 – within 7 days then you can plan ahead…

If it takes you 7 weeks to get to that break even point, then you need to plan in a different direction…

You get it…

So, once you know your client-getting cost and your ROI at various points in time, let’s talk about how to improve your ROI…

There are only two way to improve the ROI on your marketing…

Lower the cost or increase the income… Incidentally, the only two ways to grow your business profits…

To lower costs you could acquire customers cheaper by finding better deals on your advertising, or trying a different and cheaper way to advertise…

That’s one step towards improving your ROI… but one you should take lightly…

Because eventually you’re going to get to zero if you lower your costs for too long…

But if you are getting a 1,000% return on one dollar – whooptie-doo – who cares, right??

Ultimately at the end of the day, we as small business owners have the same question - how much do I get to keep?

I say all that to tell you – don’t focus on ROI and forget about net profit…

If you go the second route towards improving your ROI, then you kill two birds with one stone - improved ROI and increased net profit…

Second being increased income from individual clients…

The second method has two ways:

# Increase the transaction size for each client
# Increase the frequency of client purchases

Raising prices, new or upgraded products, or cross-sells of loosely associated items with your original product purchase. Any of these can increase transaction size…

Adding continuity to your business such as subscriptions or memberships, or joint venturing to offer existing clients new products or services are a couple ways to increase the frequency of your purchases…

Within the next month you’ll see immediate increase in profit if your implement just one of these methods…

Remember, the difference between success being a simple dream or a reality is all about implementation of good ideas…

Many failing small businesses are run by business owners with brilliant ideas, who fail to implement them…

Don’t be that business owner…

Take what you are learning here and implement it – then share your success story with me so I can publish it on the blog…

Feel free to leave any questions or comments as always…

Here’s to always improving small business advertising!!!