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Home » Business And Finance Articles » Attract More Customers With The Magic Of Marketing

Attract More Customers With the Magic of Marketing

To start seeing remarkable success, you must make time for marketing. Many people tend to make their marketing a low priority. Instead of including it as a part of your weekly routine, you may find yourself scrambling to try and find customers only when you are already slow.

Or, you may focus on marketing only after all of your e-mails answered, professional newsletters read, clients called back, and deadlines met. These things are VERY important. However, they will always be an ongoing part of your business. If you don't make time for your marketing every week, you won't be able to create a steady stream of customers.

Your time for marketing is what will help you make money. If you are in the first year of your business or your customer pipeline is not full, then you should be spending 40-50% of your time marketing. Yes, this probably seems like a lot. You may feel as if you'll never have enough time to devote this much of every week to marketing. However, marketing to prospects, leads, referrers, and centers of influence should be an ongoing process for you for the lifetime of your business.

Create more room in your week for marketing by restructuring your time and task management. Your first step in making time for marketing is to go to your calendar and carve out slots of time to work on your marketing - this includes sales, networking, writing, presentations, and so on. Next, make a list of essential and non-essential tasks that take up time in your day.

Be honest about the things that waste time in your daily routine. And, include those things that you do to procrastinate or kill time. Make a commitment to yourself that you will put aside your favorite time waster in favor of working through this program. Remember, your marketing is an investment in YOU and the long-term success of your business.

We can all find a bajillion ways to procrastinate â€" Internet surfing, playing online games, watching TV, reading e-mails, or fill in your time waster of choice. Be aware of these time sucks. If you cut back on these things, you'll be amazed at how much you can do. You'll also be excited about the results!

For your essential tasks and your marketing, make chunks of times to work on like things. For example, push sales calls and customer call-backs in one slot on your weekly calendar. Only check your e-mails once or twice a day, and answer them all at one time. Schedule uninterrupted time for marketing in the part of the day when you are the most productive.

Develop a marketing system that makes sense to you â€" you can create a simple spreadsheet, make notes in your planner, or sketch out activities on a large flipchart sheet on the wall. The point is to make an annual profile of your marketing activities including: networking events, trade shows, advertising deadlines, direct mailings, seminars, and so on. Schedule marketing and stick to it!

By focusing on your marketing, you are acknowledging that this is an aspect of your business that needs to be nurtured, Later, you will focus more energy on other areas. Once you are seeing the results of your efforts, you can cut back on the time you are spending on marketing each week. However, you still should be spending 25 - 30 % of your time on it.

Marketing will soon become a habit. This means that even when you are busy, you still schedule time in your week for marketing, networking, speaking, making follow-up calls, coffee dates, and keeping in touch with past customers and referrers.

Once you are used to making marketing part of your routine, you will find that new customers are flowing into your business in a steady stream. You won't have to scramble to sell yourself when times are slow because you will be getting the word out about your company on a regular basis.

Make a commitment to your marketing and you'll find your business will grow as a result. You will keep your sales pipeline full. This will lead to the ability to turn less desirable work away because you are in demand, you'll be able to raise your prices, and you will make more money! Your ongoing efforts will ensure your business is predictable, pleasant, and profitable.

Copyright 2006 Marketing Maven

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

How to Cut Duty Cost and Increase Profit as an Importer

Import duties continue to be significant elements in the cost of international trade. Yet many companies and businesses still pay more duties than the law requires â€" which impacts adversely on landed cost and ultimately on business profitability. A planned approach to managing customs duty costs would look to eliminate, reduce and delay payment of customs duties.

How to reduce customs duties in your business

There are many ways to reduce customs duties. The amount of duties paid depends on four "whats". Managing the impact of any of these "whats", will improve business profit.

1 What the goods are, (i.e. their nature and characteristics) determines tariff code and therefore the duty rate

2 What the origin of the goods is, (i.e. where dug up, grown, farmed, further manufactured or processed NOT just shipped from) determines whether preferential, standard or additional duties are payable

3 What the structure of the transaction is (i.e. whether sale, leased, loaned, free of charge, under warranty or repair arrangement), determines customs value

4 What happens to the goods once imported (i.e. sold, further manufactured, repaired and returned, stored and re-exported) determines whether various reliefs are available.

How to use a key opportunity in customs valuation planning

A major under utilised approach to reducing duties is to look at the customs valuation. A key provision in both US and EU customs law permits the customs value to be based on any earlier sale of the same goods in a chain of transactions prior to importation. For this reason it is variously described as the "prior sale", "earlier sale" or "chain of sales" opportunity. They all mean the same thing, i.e. lower duty!

How does this work? For example, if goods are sold by a manufacturer in the US for $60 to a US export company which, in turn, sells them to an importer in the EU for $100, duty can be paid on a value of $60, providing certain conditions are met. The savings achieved are the difference between duty on the £100 and the duty on $60. Savings of up to 40% on the duty costs are possible.

What are the benefits? The chief benefit of the approach is to save customs duty by excluding the costs and profits attributable to the non-manufacturing activities undertaken in the country of export from the customs value declared at import in the destination country (US or EU).

The approach also uncouples the value of the imported goods for customs valuation purposes from their inventory value for corporate income tax purposes. That's good because tax and customs values are often in tension. Tax authorities tend to favour a low import value (i.e. more profit to tax), whereas customs favour a higher import value (more import duty to collect.) Using an earlier sale approach, the price paid by the importer is no longer relevant for customs purposes, so that any increase in that price will not cause an increase in the amount of customs duty.

Who can benefit? Any company or business importing goods into the EU or US can benefit from the opportunity providing there has been an earlier sale and the exporter is willing to provide the relevant invoice relating to the earlier sale. Since this involves disclosure of margins by the exporter, the approach is more attractive to international groups of companies where such disclosure is not an issue and to industries where margins are already widely known. However, exporters can still realise the benefits by importing goods into the US and EU on their own account.