The fact that positive word of mouth and referrals influence small business owners’ purchasing decisions is no surprise. What is interesting to me is that female small business owners are more likely than male owners to tell everybody who they think might be interested about a positive experience they’ve had with a business supplier (according to the Enterprise Council on Small Business). If female small business owners are your target market, you should be aware of this multiplier effect and be prepared to nurture it in your ongoing targeted marketing efforts. Here are more factoids:

 

According to research reported by the Enterprise Council on Small Business, in comparison to their male counterparts, female small business owners are:

• more active participants in their industry associations
• more likely than men to be active users of online social networking sites
• more often members of their town or city’s chamber of commerce, and thus
• more likely to interact with members of other segments of the small business market
  that you may be targeting

 

Source: Enterprise Council on Small Business

 

Personalized. Relevant. We heard it everywhere at Digital Marketing Days in New York. Keynoter Christa Carone, CMO of Xerox Corp., noted that, in a world of information overload and despite the rise of social networks, true marketing value comes from the customer experience, not technology. Carone said: “Despite the flood of media messages, people remember little more than one-tenth of 1% of them.”

 

In a workshop at the conference, Richard Bonfiglio, director of customer marketing at industrial supplies distributor MSC Industrial Direct, reported that, faced with dwindling sales as the recession intensified last year, his company conducted Voice of the Customer (VOC) research that included dozens of telephone interviews of up to an hour each, with both customers and noncustomers, to help the company refine its understanding of sales trends.

 

“We were losing sales, but we weren't losing customers,” Bonfiglio said of the VOC research findings. “They were just changing the way they purchase.” For instance, many customers were making more frequent but smaller orders so that they would have less inventory on hand, which encouraged MSC to emphasize its high fill rates and speedy turnaround times in its communications.
Postal Increases and Your Fall and Holiday Marketing Plans

If postal rates go up next year, Q3 and Q4 this year are good opportunities to get in front of your audience via mail more often more economically. To leverage your direct mail campaign, you’ll also want to have an email program operating in tandem. That means it may be time to revisit your customer segmentation strategies from last year and review what worked.

 

What were your top performing incentives for each segment last year?

Free shipping? Percentage off? A set amount of money off? Short deadline sales? There may be only so much you can do to sweeten up your offers and discounts and still make money, but it always pays to look again. You might, for example, test if a sweetener like a more generous free shipping offer or a special deal-of-the-day or deal-of the-week program customers can sign up for could deliver increased sales.

 

Greater frequency, especially in direct mail, traditionally pays off!

Increased frequency is a traditional tactic to increase sales. Additionally, many audience segments prefer direct mail for product and service information and personalized offers. Plus people still like receiving mail, especially around the holidays.

 

Informational offers and a conversational approach can boost sales too.

In direct mail and email, to spur sales, you can offer how-tos that help your customers use your products or services better and more often. You can rev up your emails and website by adding customer comments, ratings, and reviews. Across the channels you use, adding personality to your messages so they feel like dialogue rather than impersonal sales pitches will pay off in increased engagement and sales.

 

Resources

Pitney Bowes Postal News

Want More Response? Do Email + Direct Mail Together by Sandra J. Blum

Direct Mail: Top Channel Influencing Consumer Purchases

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