If You Only Do One Thing – Reviewed

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Everyone is crunched for time these days. And when you’re running a business, you don’t have an extra minute in your day to try something new.

Over the last three months, we’ve used that concept and developed a weekly series here devoted to the “One Thing” you can do to grow your business. Each week, we introduced a new thing. And each week, I tried to outline how it would help you if you did only that one thing.

But like all good things, this series has come to an end. For your reading pleasure, here’s a recap of all ten “One Things”:

Part 1: Collect Your Customers’ Email Addresses

Part 2: Create a Mobile Website

Part 3: Create a Facebook Page

Part 4: Learn Google AdWords

Part 5: Install Google Analytics

Part 6: Survey Your Customers

Part 7: Attend a Tradeshow

Part 8: Promote Special Offers

Part 9: Offer Free Shipping

Part 10: Hire the Right Person

If You Only Do One Thing – Part 10

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Welcome to the latest installment of our new weekly blog series, If You Only Do One Thing. Every Monday, we will discuss one thing that you can start doing today to improve your marketing performance.

With so much advice floating around from so many different sources, it can be tough for marketers and small business owners to know where to focus. This series aims to help you out. Last week’s thing was Free Shipping.

Today’s Thing = Hire the Right Person

When all else fails and you don’t want to have to worry about marketing anymore, the best thing that you can do is hire the right person to worry about it for you.

For most small business owners and managers, marketing can seem like a bit of a chore. It’s something you know you need to do, but it’s not a first concern. And so you give it the old college try, but it never takes priority.

If you only do one thing in marketing, my advice would be to make that one thing hiring someone to handle it for you. This could mean bringing on a part time or full time employee, or it could mean retaining the services of a local agency or freelancer. Whichever you choose, bringing on the right person to handle your marketing will help you grow, even while you’re concerning yourself with other things.

Ideally, you should be looking for someone with experience doing the kind of marketing that you want to do. They should be familiar with your industry, and be able to show you some proof of past success. That will allow you to hand over control of the marketing strategy to them. You won’t need to micromanage everything that they do, so you can focus on the things that matter most to you and your business.

If you only do one thing, hire a marketer who will help you do more.

Share “If You Only Do One Thing” with all your marketing friends, and suggest future topics in the comments below or on Twitter @zheller. 

If You Only Do One Thing – Part 9

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Welcome to the latest installment of our new weekly blog series, If You Only Do One Thing. Every Monday, we will discuss one thing that you can start doing today to improve your marketing performance.

With so much advice floating around from so many different sources, it can be tough for marketers and small business owners to know where to focus. This series aims to help you out. Last week’s thing was Promote Special Offers.

Today’s Thing = Free Shipping

Free shipping sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And it is. If your company sells physical products, you should offer free shipping.

Why? Because it works. In study after study, test after test, free shipping is the single type of promotion that works to increase sales and conversion. It’s why so many companies now offer standard free shipping on all purchases. It gets more people shopping and more shoppers to purchase.

If you don’t want to mess with your pricing, and you don’t want to be one of those companies that offers a lot of discounts, then you can use free shipping as your special offer. Even if you increase your prices to cover the cost of shipping, then promote the fact that you don’t charge extra for shipping, you should see an increase in sales.

You don’t have to offer free shipping on all purchases. You can offer free shipping for limited periods of time to increase urgency. Or you can offer free shipping on orders over and above a certain value, to increase the average order size. But you can’t afford to not offer free shipping ever. You’re sacrificing sales if you do.

If you only learn one thing about marketing from me, it should be that free shipping is the best offer you can ever make.

Share “If You Only Do One Thing” with all your marketing friends, and suggest future topics in the comments below or on Twitter @zheller. 

If You Only Do One Thing – Part 7

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Welcome to the latest installment of our new weekly blog series, If You Only Do One Thing. Every Monday, we will discuss one thing that you can start doing today to improve your marketing performance.

With so much advice floating around from so many different sources, it can be tough for marketers and small business owners to know where to focus. This series aims to help you out. Last week’s thing was Survey Your Customers.

Today’s Thing = Attend a Tradeshow

Attending a tradeshow does not necessarily mean marketing in a lot of people’s minds. It fits into the category of networking or relationship building. But I recommend rethinking how tradeshows can help you, with a marketing twist.

There are two types of tradeshows that I will recommend to you here.

First, you have marketing tradeshows. Shows like Leads Con or SEO Summit, and the hundreds around the country like them, give you a chance to check out the latest trends in marketing. Just by walking the floor for a day, you can learn from a large number of marketing companies. And if you attend seminars, you will gain insights into how you can use these trends to your advantage.

Second, there are most likely tradeshows for your industry. Here, you can walk the floor and do your own form of market research. You can visit your competitors to find out what they’re doing, and how they’re marketing themselves. This will help you position your brand against theirs. What do you do better? How does your price compare?

Some tradeshows are free to attend, others cost money. Sometimes you can get a free floor pass by signing up with a sponsoring company. But whether or not you have to pay, walking the floor at one of these shows can help you gain an increased knowledge of your industry and how to market your company to prospective customers.

And for that reason, it’s one thing you should definitely do.

Share “If You Only Do One Thing” with all your marketing friends, and suggest future topics in the comments below or on Twitter @zheller. 

If You Only Do One Thing – Part 6

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Welcome to the latest installment of our new weekly blog series, If You Only Do One Thing. Every Monday, we will discuss one thing that you can start doing today to improve your marketing performance.

With so much advice floating around from so many different sources, it can be tough for marketers and small business owners to know where to focus. This series aims to help you out. Last week’s thing was Install Google Analytics.

Today’s Thing = Survey Your Customers

Surveys are powerful tools that are often ignored or underutilized. As a business owner or marketer, we get all wrapped up in the product and the marketing from our own point of view. But it’s our customers who will ultimately determine our fate. So why don’t we get their point of view?

That’s what surveys are for. And they can take many different forms. They can come in the form of in person interviews, phone calls, online surveys delivered via email or right on your website, focus groups, etc.

What information can you glean from customer surveys?

The short answer is, anything that will help your business. Find out demographic information, like age, gender, and income. Find out shopping habits, such as what they’re looking for, who else they buy from, how they found you. Find out how satisfied they are, what problems they’re having, how your offering is better or worse than others, and what suggestions they have for improvements.

The goal is to end up with a better understanding of who your customers are and how they experience your product or service so that you can improve and find more people like them.

There is no wrong time to survey customers. You can ask questions of your website visitors, you can call customers a certain amount of time after they purchase, or send out an email to all customers at once with an online survey. The more information you can get, the more you will understand who they are and how they view your brand.

Instead of making decisions internally, surveys allow you to react to real information directly from the people that matter most, your customers.

Share “If You Only Do One Thing” with all your marketing friends, and suggest future topics in the comments below or on Twitter @zheller.