The purpose of any business is to fulfill the need of a market while satisfying its customers all the while being profitable. And ultimately, how successful any business is will depend upon how it fulfill the needs or solve the problems of its customers.

One of the biggest problems that small business owners grapple with is how or what is the best way to grow their business while at the same time remaining profitable… many simply don’t have a solid plan.

Unfortunately for lack of having a well thought out plan, many business migrate from one idea to the next hoping that if nothing else, the law of averages will eventually catch up with them and they will stumble across a profitable model.

We all know that it just doesn’t happen this way. Oh sure there are those exceptions to the rules but most just aren’t lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. And speaking of luck… what most people that never experience any luck just haven’t come to the realization that luck is the end result of preparation intersecting with opportunity.

And for business this axiom is no different. There needs to be some thought and some planning that needs to be done so you’ll be ready when opportunity presents itself for growth and success.

If you strip away all the theory and packaging, there are four basic elements that about all other sub-elements of growing a business are a part of.

First… and this is a biggie….

You can get more customers. Seriously… don’t click off the page. We’re talking about the basic tenets of growing a business… obvious, I know, but it’s not arguable that this would be one of the headings. Please stay with me on this because I’m headed somewhere with some pretty astounding numbers on all this can tie together and be the easiest way you never knew you could grow your business.

Second… Increase the ticket value of the sale. In other words get more money every time a customer is in the buying mode.

Third… Entice your customers to buy more frequently from you. Get them to come back more often.

Fourth…. Extend the evergreen properties of your customers. Keep them buying from you over a longer period of time.

Let’s now discuss these in just a bit more detail.

I know you rolled your eyes at the first key. But, this is the area that most businesses spend the most time and money. Yet, even though it is absolutely necessary to replace the customers that no longer do business with you, you must keep in mind that number one is the most time consuming and least profitable method of growing your business.

Number two – increasing your ticket average. This has been a lynch pin in the restaurant business for years. Focusing on this area can literally add 20 to 40 percent or more to your bottom line. With a few creative marketing and selling strategies such as splintering, cross-selling, bundling, you can get your customers to spend a little more to get a better value while adding nothing additional than your net cost of the item since there is no additional marketing costs.

Number three begins by getting to know and listening to your customers to know what their needs and their problems are that you fulfill and/or solve. Then you simply stay in touch with them to offer additional products that you already know are of interest to them or that will benefit them. This a an absolutely fantastic way to communicate special offers to your customer base and even offers from other suppliers or vendors that you can negotiate a special price for as a part of a joint venture.

Number four is something that sometimes gets lost in the hectic daily activities of running your business, but number four is a powerful concept and it’s all about increasing your customer’s evergreen period. By this I mean how long does this customer continue to buy and support your business not only with their dollars but by referring others. The longer a customer keeps coming back the more benefits they receive from your products and the more goodwill and profit your business gains in return.

Okay… let’s dispatch with the conversation at this point and get into the fun part… the numbers and let’s approach it this way.

Obviously increasing any one of the four pillars mentioned above will mean increased profits for your business.

So, in order to illustrate (and to make the math easy for yours truly) let’s say:

You have a customer base of 1,000 folks.
They spend an average of $100 two times per year or $200 per year
Their evergreen period is 5 years

So, $200/yr x 1,000 customers x 5 years = $1,000,000

Easy enough… so let’s continue with business growth the numbers…

Okay… we’ve come a long way since setting the stage, and then looking over some actual numbers so now you can can see how you don’t have to single any one area out in your business plan that you believe is under achieving and then spend countless hours, energy, and money cracking the whip steadfastly focused on one area.

Quite the contrary as you can see by the very enlightening numbers… small gains across multiple areas will yield you much greater ROI and with not nearly the amount of time, effort, and expense.

So, you can see the numbers… and you like what you see. You like the idea and can’t wait to take it back to your business… but how… how do you get started?

Glad you asked… let’s take a look at getting you jump started, and then I’m sure you can take it from there.

To Get More Customers

	Determine and select a target audience that you can fulfill and serve effectively. Get to know both your customer base, and the people around the community, and the demographics of the people who have bought and what they have bought from you in the past.
	Create your identity in the market. In other words, begin branding yourself and your business as an authority in that market that you have selected. Don’t be afraid to promote and market yourself.
	Develop and deploy a marketing message that is compelling and gets your target audience curious and interested in learning more about how you can help them.Work on developing a referral program that your existing customers can be exited about and that will turn them literally into a little army of sales people out in the community talking you up and referring business to you.

To Increase Your Ticket Average

At the time of the purchase, suggest a money saving larger size, or a money savings bundle that you have put together that complements (and up-sells) what the customer is already buying. This is known as bundling splintered the items. For example, if someone is buying a single splintered item that may be part of a group, suggest if they buy the whole group, the savings would be like getting one free if they bought them all separately.

Always, suggest additional items or accessories that would go well with the purchase. There isn’t an item around that doesn’t have some sort of complimentary accessory… and this goes to if you’re in the service business… in fact it may be even easier to offer upgrades to any service you may be selling.

To Get Customers To Buy More Often

Know what your customers needs are. If you’re in business and you’re not communicating with your customers often enough to know what’s going on in their world, what problems that they be experiencing, and what they would like to have, then you’re just flat missing the boat with one of the easiest ways to increase your business.When you know your customers, developing specials, bundling items, and getting referrals because you’re so in tune, will just become natural.

In today’s world, if you’re actively developing a customer list that you can regularly (even automatically) stay in touch with them, you’re behind your competition already. Always keep your customers informed on what’s new. What’s coming up… and even going away. Get them to opt-in to your business newsletter or ezine. Stay in touch with post cards and email broadcasts that are in tune to what they purchase… so you keep them away from your competition.

Increase Your Customer’s Evergreen Factor

	Get to know your customers. Call on them from time to time. In today’s electronic world this is easy, but go beyond that. You need to be out in the community networking and being an active member of local charities and organizations.
	Respect and care for your customers. Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. If you always take time out from your hectic day to personalize their experience with you and your business you’ll have customers and referrals from those customers coming to your business for life. In other words, make sure your customers are raving fans of you and your business.

Now get back to your business and spend some time looking over these four keys areas for business growth. Develop a plan of action for each area. It doesn’t have to be extensive to get started but get something down in writing for ideas that you can readily implement that will begin to maximize each one of these areas.

Then lastly… and most importantly… take action. Don’t worry about if your plans and ideas are perfect… just get started TODAY!

You can tweak, adjust, and learn as you go, but get going you must.

Remember, don’t worry or exert all your efforts trying to hit the home run. It’s the little improvements across all areas that really pay the big dividends…

Remember what you’ve just learned on how to get 10% to return 46.4%.

Give me a call or get in touch and let’s talk about where you are, where you want to be, and most importantly, how to get there.

SEM or Search Engine Marketing – is the fastest growing form of online marketing. It’s really not a form… it essentially is the driving component behind most all online marketing.

The bottom line is… outside of paying for your website traffic, if you want pages of your site to appear on the first few pages of the search results of the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo)then you must engage in and become proficient at SEM.

Getting your website (more accurately your web pages) in the top pages of the search results delivers to you by the search engines more market awareness and branding than all other advertising combined.

When speaking of getting your pages ranked at the top of the search engine results, this is referring to the organic search results. An organic search result is whereby a searcher finds websites via the unpaid listings that come up
and not via the paid advertising links that populate the sides of the page.

Per Per Click or PPC as it is known is an advertising tool used by businesses and websites where they pay a determined amount each time on of their ads is clicked on. In other words, they pay for this traffic to land on their chosen page. The fee that the advertiser pays per click is determined by a bidding process. The amount of the bid necessary to garner a good position in the presented list of ads is determined by a number of criteria driven by the keyword that they want to bid on.

This is very simple, quick mention of the PPC process. Pay Per Click is indeed much more involved and complex, but for the purpose of this article, we’ll focus on the organic searches.

When comes to search engines there are still really only three (well actually only one)that dominate the market share, and they are Google, Yahoo, and MSN (now Bing). In fact, there is one that dominates even this short list… Google.

Numbers vary, but even today, it is estimated that Google’s share of the search engine market is in the neighborhood of 70%.

With the search engine being the engine that determine the ranking of web pages which ultimately determines the amount of traffic that comes to a site, suffice it to say that it is a crucial strategy to make the search engines happy with your website and pages.

Enter Search Engine Optimization next…

In a very short span of time, this thing we call the Internet and online marketing has matured into a very powerful marketing platform and has/is changing the way we conduct our business.

In fact, the Internet now gives any business access to literally a world wide marketplace. And not only that, it does so very quickly and very economically. You see, the Internet is, at it’s core, blind justice for all business. It no longer requires a business to have a massive advertising budget to reach a market beyond its local boundaries. The size and/or location of a business are no longer a determining factor when assessing the competition in the world of online marketing.

Today, a rapidly growing number of companies are not only rethinking their overall marketing approach, but they are reallocating their advertising and marketing dollars to the online marketing segment.

This type of move is not without trepidation for many businesses simply because online marketing and the benefits are unfamiliar territory.

One of the greatest benefits to online marketing is its ability to level the playing field. Even small businesses these days can expand their market reach from local to national… even international if they so desire in a very quick and cost effective manner.

It’s not like the days gone by of print, radio, and television (particularly radio and television) where a business had to be large enough and have a large enough budget to achieve this type of market penetration.

An not only that, since online marketing is essentially electronic marketing; almost every activity can be bench-marked, tracked, and monitored in order for business to get on the fly feedback which allows them to make real time changes and improvements that deliver almost immediate results concerning their ROI.

So what are some of these online marketing activities?

Although this is a bit of a loaded question as there are numerous methods and sub-methods, let’s take a look at a few… search engine marketing (SEM), e-mail marketing, and social media marketing.

Even though this may not look or sound like a long list, don’t be fooled; there is a myriad of activities and tasks that surround each of these.

Let’s take a little closer look at search engine marketing