Let’s just say you have done everything you can for your local marketing efforts for your business. Let’s review what you have done:
1) You’ve now have a well crafted local listing through Google and numerous other search engines. Your local search traffic has expanded tremendously – Great Job!
2) You have videos flooding the internet where both computers and mobile phones can reach – you are being seen!
3) You have updated your website to reflect your business goals and strategies and have included a way to capture customer data – awesome!
4) You have an e-mail marketing system that automatically sends out e-mails to potential customers and you also send out an occasional e-mail “blast” to keep communication to your customers and potential customers – terrific!
5) You have recently added mobile marketing to your printed material that is capable of reaching your entire customer base within 15 minutes – Incredible!!!
6) You have set up a “cardless” customer loyalty program using the exploding trend of mobile phone texting – wonderful!
6) You are now including social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare into your marketing mix – You’re a marketing genius!!
Through all your marketing efforts, incoming traffic has never been better and your advertising budget has actually decreased!! Everything seems to be going better than you could have possibly hoped for.
So Why Are Your Sales Not Increasing?
Simple. Check the people who are interacting with your customers. If you have people who are not properly matched to handle an inflow of customers, you have hit the #1 reason why businesses have a difficult time keeping customers and attracting new ones.
For example, let’s say you have a heating and air conditioning business. You have a service technician, Fred, who has been with the company for 10 years. He is exceptionally knowledgeable and could write a textbook on how to repair any air conditioner or furnace ever made. He’s a wealth of knowledge. Unfortunately, Fred likes to swear all the time and often does so in front of customers. He’s generally rude to people and has no problem telling people what he thinks – including what’s wrong with the customer’s furniture, colors in their house, etc. He’s generally rude and offensive to your customers.
Whether you have a heating and air business, restaurant, hair salon, etc., you as the business owner or manager must be able to identify any people that are potential “time bombs” to your customers. This can be catastrophic to your marketing efforts and can end up costing you your business!
If you believe you have someone, or worse yet, multiple people that fit this description – make a change NOW! You should get that person out of the customers view and re-assign their job duties. If this cannot be done, you may need to make an employment change and hire people who are better suited to handle the public.
The only thing worse than having a rude employee sabotage your efforts to get new customers is PAYING him or her to do it!
