By Kent Covington
If there’s one thing most all of us business owners & managers have in common these days… it’s that we’re working hard to keep our costs down. In this economy, that’s a must. However, you cannot afford to run and hide. You must remain on offense and continue to reach out to customers and prospective customers. There’s an old adage that says “A funny thing happens when you stop inviting people to do business with you…”
I’ll bet you can guess how the rest of it goes.
You probably understand the importance of marketing to your customer base, but you can’t justify risking large sums of cash right now on marketing efforts that may or may not pay off. With that in mind, we’d like to recommend two extremely low-risk, low-cost marketing tools that are among the most cost-effective methods around. We’ll talk about the first of those two methods today, and we’ll cover the second in the next newsletter.
The first cost-effective marketing tool we recommend is on-hold marketing. I know, what a surprise, right?! An on-hold marketing company recommends on-hold marketing… shocker! But I won’t tell you anything I don’t wholeheartedly believe, and if you’ll humor me for a moment, I think what I have to say here will make sense to you.
It should always be your goal to answer calls as quickly as possible, but unless you have a staff of 30 at your counter at all times, hold time is just a part of doing business. So what happens when your customers and prospective customers are placed on hold?
If callers hear silence when placed on hold, you have a problem. Research shows that, when holding to silence, 60% of callers will hang up before their call is answered. Perhaps your callers are more patient. If so, great! But the fact remains that holding to silence is proven to make hold time seem longer than it actually is, and that greatly increases the risk of losing calls. That matters because lost calls often = lost business.
But even if you never lost a single call, if your customers are holding to silence, you’re still losing opportunities. Hold time is a valuable chance to let customers know about new products or even existing products, which they may not know you carry. It’s also a great time to remind customers of all the reasons why they should do business with you. Another great use for on-hold marketing is to inform callers of upcoming events, such as training classes or customer appreciation days. On-hold marketing provides many different ways to use otherwise wasted hold time to build your business.
That covers the “effective” part of cost-effective equation… now what about the “cost” part?
If you think about it, the most expensive part of any advertising is the platform. If you run a newspaper ad, you’re paying for the ad space. If you air a TV commercial, you’re paying for the air time. The development of the actual print ad or the commercial is a small part of the overall cost. But customer hold time is already yours; it’s a platform YOU own. You don’t have to pay for air time or ad space, which makes it a very low-cost way to advertise. The development & delivery of the on-hold marketing (what your customers hear when placed on hold) is your only investment, and it’s a relatively small one at that. Generally, you can get started for less than less than your basic cable bill. You can get an exact quote with a quick phone call to WinOnHold.
On-hold marketing enables you to do 3 things:
1. Convert more callers into customers
2. Educate and sell more to existing customers
3. Build a more professional image
Bottom line, on-hold marketing helps you to make the very most of what you already have, and prevent business from falling through the cracks. And that kind of marketing is always far more cost-effective than paying handsomely to reach entirely new customers.
If we can answer any questions for you, we’d be happy to help. Just give us a call at (888) 465-3661.
Once again, we’ll cover cost-effective marketing tool #2 in an upcoming issue. Until then, best wishes and happy Labor Day!
