Offer an Additional Service

Offering an Additional service is a great way to increase revenue. This can be done as a different service or the same from the core competency of a company. For example a landscaping company offers a landscaping service to a customer finishing a yard. Following finishing the yard, the landscaping company can offer yard maintenance to the customer as an additional service. This company may even be able to offer snow clearing to the customer in winter as well. These additional services create work and revenue into the future.

Offer Community Specific Products

For example if you live in a small town, offer the towns sports teams on flags and banners. This can help generate high margins on a few products that are likely not offered by any other company in town. This works with sports, town pictures, town collectables, etc. Anything that foster a sense of community will work in this manner.

Have a Lead Loss Product

A lead loss product is a product that is prices below cost to get people into a store. This is a great idea for certain grocery stores and common product stores. This brings people into your store instead of the competition and will create traffic. the idea is that by bringing people in they will then buy other products making good markups out of convenience of being in the store. It does not work well with specialty product stores because people that want specialty products will get and need them either way.

Importance of a Logo

Logos must be simple, memorable, versatile and future oriented.

1. A simple logo is the best logo, something that focuses on the company values and uses company colours. Often the best logos are ones that do not take time to think about, you just know what they are and mean. And in being simple it translates to the next essential part of logos.. memorability.

2. In order for a logo to stick in a consumer or customers head it must be unique. Some techniques that are used include:

• Bold colours
• A unique letter
• Contrast of colours
• Is industry specific (eg. not a leaf when working in house building)

Making the logo memorable works into the next part.. versatility.

3. In todays world social media and advertising is a must. Any logo that is designed must be able to be used in more then one setting. For example, the logo that is placed on the website must also be able to be placed on company vehicles, which must be used on a advertisement, which is used on the mobile webpage, which is used to make the app. Keeping the logo universal is essential.

4. A logo must be able to be used into the future. Think ahead and the logo will be able to last time. For example, the logo chosen must encompass the goals of the company moving forward, if the company wants to move from landscaping to snow clearing in the winter chose a logo that will work for both. This is why a business plan is so essential, setting goals and knowing what the future may bring is used in every part of the business.


Logos are not aging, they allow for branding and help a company or service to be recognizable. Being recognizable can help advertisements to be more effective and overall help increase traffic and interest to a store or service.

Conduct a Survey

Conducting a Survey of potential customers is a great way to see if your Business idea or marketing idea will meet your goals and is feasible. The first step in conducting a survey is to narrow down the group or groups of people that you want to survey. The second is to come up with the survey technique. And then finally all that is left is to administer the survey and collect the results. One thing to watch is for survey bias, check questions to make sure the do not point to a specific answer. Also, in person surveys can sometimes can pressure making the respondent tell you what you want to hear. As long as you take the survey from enough people it will make the outliers noticeable and help generate an accurate and reliable result.

Research

It is essential to research the target market and customers of your company or service. This will help in deciding on the four P's of marketing and help to increase traffic and profit.


The Four P's of marketing make up what is called the marketing mix. The four P's are: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Product: Product consists of the different aspects and qualities of a product or service such as:
-Quality
-Design
-Brand
-Packaging
-Features

Price: Includes not only the physical price but the credit terms, discounts, allowances and incentives used to help sell the service or product.

Place: Refers to the different market segments, target markets and market qualities that make up the area in which a product or service will be marketed and ultimately sold.

Promotion: Refers to promoting and advertising a product to the target customers. It includes the different channels, bundling, advertisements, promotions and pricing to attract customers and ultimately sell a product.

Knowing the customers better help you make decisions regarding these key areas.

Offering a Loyalty or Points Program

Offering a loyalty or points program helps to gain exclusive customers, develop an email list for quick advertising, help to maintain customers and increase sales. Many companies are beginning to offer a points program so to keep up with the competition it is vital to have a program that is sort of the same. Also offering greater discounts and incentives for loyal customers is a great way to increase sales.