There are numerous ways to convince your customers to patronize your products. When dealing with your online and offline customers, what you say is as important as how you say it. For instance, Landing the Deal talks about using the hypothetical situation technique to persuade someone to do what you want them to do. Below are other different techniques you can combine to convince your dear customers:

Storytelling

We talked about storytelling recently and how our minds are conditioned to be easily stimulated with a good story. When dealing with your prospective customers try to share some real success stories and if possible show some testimonials from these people. You might also set up a bulletin board of testimonials in your office and on your website.

Scarcity

Our fear of losing something is a very good motivator. Use deadlines and that classic yet powerful phrase “limited offer only”. A common mistake made by some entrepreneurs is not going all the way with this approach. You should make your threat credible to your customers by either increasing the price of your product or pulling it out of the market temporarily. You can always have a come back in a “due to insistent public demand” approach.

Green is the buzzword in the business world today. It is not enough that businesses satisfy customers; it should be done in a clean, sustainable, or environmental way. Big players are aggressively promoting this cause-worthy strategy but it doesn’t mean our small businesses can’t compete in that category.

The recent passing of Anita Roddick, Body Shop founder and prime advocate of environmentalism, should serve as an inspiration to all entrepreneurs. Her business started from a small store with only 15 product lines and grew into what it is today. Here’s a simple guide to start a green business:

Choose a Niche Product

Green business is not limited to cosmetics and foods, although they represent the chunk of the market. Other categories include eco-friendly blankets, baby products, vitamins, or books. Visit some of the credible suppliers in the following sites:

• GreenPeople.org
• Global Sources
• Alibaba.com

Following the advice from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you should seek first to understand, then to be understood. That’s why it is important that you know well your chosen niche product. Bootstrapper offers a comprehensive green entrepreneur’s toolbox containing 100 networking resources, guides, and links.

Practice What You Preach

It is very hard to convince your employees and customers to support green products if you don’t apply it to yourself. You are your business’ best endorser during the initial stage of this venture. It can be simple “green acts” like using recycled papers and other eco-friendly materials.

Capitalize on Word of Mouth

Eco-friendly products are strongly driven by word-of-mouth advertising so you should delight all your customers and motivate them to your very credible and highly active sales force.

What will you do after creating a massive marketing buzz and successfully launching a new product? For many entrepreneurs, we’ll say time to reap what we sow. Not for Apple. Two months after launching the ultra cool and revolutionary iPhone, they reduced the selling price by $200! While many investors reacted negatively, some business analysts believe there was wisdom in that move. MarketingBlurb says this price cut has far reaching effects.

Welcome to price-cutting strategy 101. It’s not an insane idea, only unconventional. In fact, it is proven effective for some established brands. However, this strategy is not advisable for startups. The value of this post is to give you a preview about the different strategies available to your competitors. There are two reasons why a company should employ this strategy:

Defensive strategy

Reducing your price increases barrier to entry, logically making the lives of startups more difficult and less profitable. Most startups base their pricing strategies on the current market price of leading brands. It means any significant drop in market price prompts a new player to look for a cheaper supplier, delay development, and suffer losses. Given this situation, many entrepreneurs will simply back out.

Expand the Market

Sometimes a price cut is aimed to increase usage or expand the market. Some experts think this is the reason why iPhone called that shot. The new price will attract more buyers and encourage other mobile users to switch to iPhone. However, this is an open declaration of price war. Apple is not worried because they have a very strong brand anyway.

An interesting news came up yesterday and it’s about Wal-Mart’s decision to drop its tagline “Always Low Prices” and adopt a new one, “Save Money. Live Better”. The retailing giant wants to deliver a more emotional brand message instead of highlighting its price advantage.

You see, even big companies are shifting away from using price and focusing more on relationship or emotional marketing. Why? Because some studies conclude that emotions excites our minds 3000 times faster than any logical arguments! More importantly, relationships are built through emotions. You may want to try some of the tactics below to make your business more heart-warming:

Highlight the Benefits

Whether you’re talking to a customer, writing your brochure or designing your website, you should always hype up the benefits of your products and avoid focusing on the features. If you’re selling a car, for instance, don’t say it’s equipped with 220 horsepower V8 engine, front-side airbags, and anti-lock brakes. Instead, pitch about family safety and worry-free driving. If you have emotional testimonials from your customers, that will also do the trick. Include them in your brochure or websites to establish emotional connection and credibility.

Use Colors Properly

What comes to your mind when you see color green? Usually it’s money or eco-friendly products. It may appear trivial but colors can trigger different emotions. Using the right color combination in your promotional materials might actually increase your sales and conversions. Visit Color Wheel Pro to know the different color meanings.

Learn how Better 4 Business applies emotional marketing and Small Business SEM’s analysis on what Apple’s marketing can teach small business.

The teen and young adult markets offer lucrative opportunities but you have to be ready against intensive competition. There is only one word to capture the essence of teen marketing – COOL. Although business experts find it hard to define coolness, brands like iPhone,YouTube, Apple, and Google exemplify the so-called “x factor”. Below are some basic tips to help your small business get that enigmatic coolness:

Go Beyond Demographics

The teen market is very tricky and many entrepreneurs made the fatal mistake of lumping together all the teens as one big target market. Inside this seemingly homogeneous market are subgroups with diverse needs and wants. The 13-year olds are very different from the 15 or 19 year olds. Decide which teen subgroup to target first and customize your marketing campaign accordingly.

Partner with Gadget and Gaming Websites

An interesting study from eMarketer advises marketing guys to take advantage of the teen proclivity for using consumer electronics and entertainment devices, and for visiting websites about gadgets and gaming.

Over two-thirds of people in this age group own PCs, DVD players, home stereos, mobile phones or handheld devices. Additionally, one-quarter own MP3 players and Internet-enabled or camera phones. But gaming presents the best opportunity for marketers who wish to reach this audience. Over 90% own a gaming device, and three-quarters play online and offline games on their PC.

Be a Teenager

See the world from a teenager’s perspective to make your content and communication approach relevant. Know what magazines and social networking websites they read, favorite movies and TV shows, celebrities they love to hate, and other activities. Try hanging out at Starbucks and you might pick up some valuable information about this market.

Ever wonder why your online visitors don’t come back anymore? You can drive huge traffic to your online business, but if you can’t motivate them to return and buy from you then you’re bound to lose. One major reason for this behavior is poor online customer service. Below are some simple tips you might want to use:

Write Detailed FAQs

Interested customers might have many questions in mind, so you should feed their curiosity with your FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page. Make it as detailed as possible but use simple words and images to avoid any miscommunication. You should also set a dedicated email address and possibly toll-free numbers exclusively for customer service. Using live assistance through Instant Messenger or VoIP will also help.

Add Personal Touch

Since almost everything can easily be automated, many online entrepreneurs forget the relationship aspect of selling. Talk to your online customers the way you talk to your offline customers. Show sincerity, concern, and willingness to help them solve their problems. Send personal greetings and if possible handwritten cards during birthdays and holidays.

Use Autoresponders

It would greatly help if you have an autoresponder or a software that automatically answers any e-mails sent to it. This is good for welcoming new members and notifying customers about the delivery of their shipment. However, I urge you not to rely on this technology too much. Keep it more personal.

Customer service is just one aspect of keeping your customers. Entrepreneur’s Journey has an interesting post on how to keep website visitors coming back for more.

Ever consider using coupons to promote your business? In case you don’t know, coupons are documents or tickets that you can exchange for a discount on a particular product. Mostly, they appear in magazines, newspapers, and recently on the internet. You can check dealcatcher.com for sample coupons.

Marketing Blog suggests we use coupons as part of a marketing strategy because 9 out of 10 US consumers use coupons.

The upside of offering coupons can be improved branding, awareness, and transactions. Over the long-term you can see the benefits of this strategy. The downside however, if offered in an ineffective manner is that consumers get used to always using a coupon to purchase your product or service. This habit can be hard to break.

Here are some tips to help you succeed in using coupons for your small business:

• Highlight the benefits. Don’t just say big discounts, premiums, freebies, or bonuses but make your target customers realize the value of coupons: save money, look more beautiful, improve health, and other benefits.
• Use your company logo to increase brand awareness.
• Use images of product use to create desire.
• Create compelling headlines and use powerful selling words such as new, easy, simple, free, save, proven, fast, effective, and guaranteed.
• Combine with other marketing tactics such as contests or games.

Having a well-defined target market or niche is the first important step towards success in your small business. Previously, we emphasized the things you should know about your customers. This time we will dig deeper and present the details of market segmentation. You may want to copy the following bases for segmentation:

Demographic

• Gender
• Age
• Education Level
• Monthly and Annual Income
• Occupation/Profession
• Marital Status
• Nationality
• Religion
• Social Class
• Number of children
• Family lifecycle

Geographic

• Region
• Seasonality
• Population size

Buying Behaviors

• Key benefits they are looking for
• Usage rate or how often do they buy
• Decision-making process
• Key motivators for buying
• Readiness to buy

Psychographics or Lifestyle Factors

• Attitudes (are they socially-conscious, family-oriented, fun-loving, conservative, liberal, eco-friendly, trendsetter or trend follower?)
• Activities/Hobbies
• Interests
• Opinions
• Values

While it helps if you can conduct a formal market research, you can still gather these things through customer feedback and membership to related associations or groups. You will find several groups of customers as you do this exercise. Instigator Blog suggests that the next step is to identify your best customers and create a persona to capture their essence.

Having troubles coming up with a good name for your small business or new product? Don’t worry for there are several strategies available at your disposal to ignite your creativity. The latest trend today, according to Entrepreneurs Daily, is using gobbledygook names like Wakoopa, Imeem, Xobni, and Frengo.

Some of you may even be irritated as to why we should give a damn about names if we can offer great customer service and run effective marketing campaign. To borrow the words of Karen Post, a great name is like extra octane in a brand. In some cases, it can make or break your brand.

Here’s a classic example that came from the book entitled Classic Failures in Product Marketing about having a wrong name:

Hunt-Wesson, one of the largest and most successful food companies in the US, decided to enter the French-speaking Quebec market in Canada. Aiming to localize its brands, it directly translated one of its product lines, Big John, to French and it was called Gros Jos. However they failed to dig deeper and evaluate this new brand name. Later on, they discovered that Gros Jos is a slang term for “big breasts” in French Canada!

In general, you should pick a name having emotional appeal, personality, depth, and very sticky to customers’ minds. Moreover, there are at least 10 different ways to name your business or products and you can read them all at The Name Inspector.

Gathering information about your target market is very important to assess their needs and wants. However, you should also know what information is vital in order to serve them better. Below are some things you need to find out before it’s too late:

• Demographics and Location. While you have a target market in mind, your actual customers might be different from who you intended to target in the beginning. Information includes sex, age, location, and income bracket. Compare it with your profile and probe deeper to know the underlying reasons.
• Buying motivation. Discovering what motivates prospective (and existing) customers to buy from you is crucial to finding the right customer. In most cases, customers are either buying your products to solve a problem, or to prevent a problem from happening. This is very important information that will help you create good advertising campaigns.
• Product Usage. Are they using your product aside from what it’s supposed to do? For instance, the mouthwash Listerine is also proven effective for cleaning foot problems like toenail fungus. You might be missing a lucrative segment if you don’t point and market alternate uses of your products.