Thoughts on Marketing…

Marketing your services is the first step – you get the customers in the door. But if you don’t deliver what you’ve promised, then what? They won’t come back, that’s what! And that leaves businesses in the position to keep hunting for more and more new customers.

Worse yet, they have to look for customers who haven’t heard from the ones who won’t go back.

The restaurant that promises upscale dining and then serves small portions with a rude attitude won’t get repeat business. The Realtor who promises to advertise in 6 publications and fails to do so won’t get renewed listings. And the retailer who sells a warranty and won’t stand behind it has lost a customer for life.

Plus, all those disgruntled and unhappy people will tell others.

All 3 of these examples are from real experiences that have touched my life lately. The “fancy new restaurant” we visited with a neighbor is now a neighborhood joke. “If you go, take your own food!”

The Realtor who made big promises to a friend of mine is often the topic of discussion over cocktails.

And the retailer who sold my son a warranty, then extracted an extra $200 from him before they would even look at his non-working computer? You can bet that all of us will tell anyone and everyone to stay as far away from Best Buy as possible. Especially since the computer still didn’t work after they fixed it – twice.

Now Best Buy probably doesn’t care what we think or who we tell, because they’re such a huge chain and have so much advertising out there that a few lost customers are no big deal. But the “little guys” like the restaurant owner and the Realtor do have a lot to worry about.

Their customer base is small, and they need every bit of help they can get to make it grow. In short, they need satisfied customers telling others good things about them.

Customer service and customer satisfaction are the second part of marketing – and the most valuable advertising you can get is word of mouth.

Take care that all of the employees who represent you care as much about it as you do…