Promote your business on a social network and discourage the undesirables


One of the major growth areas of the internet has been social networking sites such as Facebook and Friends Reunited. Facebook in particular has shown dramatic growth more than the past couple of years, and has literally millions of members. These sites are visited by millions of people, but because they're essentially sites for individuals to meet their friends, the atmosphere is unthreatening and people's resistance is low.

There's, of course, a system for advertising on Facebook, and the advertising can be targeted to specific groups of people - your marketplace could be segmented by age, by gender, by interests, by hobbies, by marital status, and so forth.

This means that individuals see advertisements that are relevant to their own needs and circumstances, instead of having to accept a "scattergun" approach and therefore spending effort on filtering out advertising that is of no relevance or interest.

However, some small businesses merely say what they're doing at present (flying, sailing, serving meals, etc.) and thus communicate with friends. Provided the person running the business has sufficient friends on the system, word quickly spreads.

Some little businesses, especially those in inherently exciting areas like aviation, mountaineering, bungee jumping, or travel, have produced fantastic use of the social networking websites to promote their services and maintain relationships with existing clients.

Recruit a large number of people to your list of friends. They will form the nucleus of your network. Upload a lot of photographs of you, your friends, your business, and so forth. Don't be too obvious about promoting your business - this will alienate customers, and will also provoke the site owners to start charging you for advertising. If you do decide to pay for advertising space, target your audience as precisely as feasible. This will eliminate time-wasters.

Most firms invest most of their time trying to attract and retain customers. Most of the time, this really is exactly what should be happening - but most managers (especially in service industries) are aware that some clients merely are not worth keeping. How much better would it be if they had been discouraged in the first place? Following all, finding out that they're not great customers involves making some effort.

Frizzell Insurance specializes in insuring people like teachers, civil servants, and local authority workers - people who, by their career choice, show that they choose a safe, quiet life. As motorists, these people are like gold dust, needless to say. Frizzell, in typical with many other insurance companies, operates online and through a call center, however it is a small business and cannot handle a big influx of calls: the company as a result wanted to discourage unsuitable callers, i.e., high-risk drivers.

Frizzell's TV campaign showed couples who had insured via Frizzell for numerous years. The couples were shown as they're now, and as they had been when they first started insuring with Frizzell, with music from that period playing.

The advertising was tested with both the target audience and with the "undesirables": the target audience thought the ads were charming and engaging, whereas the undesirables thought them boring, banal, and condescending. Frizzel skilled its biggest-ever annual growth in business, outstripping arch-rival and market leader Direct Line.

Identify the elements that will probably be most likely to repel the undesirables. Test any advertising carefully with both the target audience and also the undesirables. Make certain that the factors that repel undesirables do not also repel the target audience!

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This article was sent to us by: Jim C. Smith at 01202011

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