Quite simply it connects you with your customers and allows you to easily and frequently communicate with them and build stronger personal releationships.

Build a relationship with your customers  by getting to know them and giving them something they value, personalised to their preferences. SMS can help you do this, when you use it alongside normal methods for collecting information about your customers.

Use SMS and a loyalty program together and you are on a winner – and it isn’t expensive. It can be done for a very small cost.

For information on how to build SMS into your marketing campaigns, check out my e-book .

For information on setting up a loyalty program for your business, check out this short video.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004W4MDWI

It’s called Mobile Magic, and it is a short guide to illustrate the many ways that SMS messaging can be built into the marketing strategy for any business. It’s short, concise and great value at less than a fiver.

I’d love to hear your feedback.

You might think that customer loyalty programs are difficult and expensive to set up and manage. If you set about doing it all yourself and setting it up from scratch, then that is probably true, but what if you could become a part of a loyalty program that is set up and managed for you?

I recently started working with a company called Lyoness, who do exactly that. Lyoness is an International shopping community. The concept is very simple. Lyoness trading partners offer Lyoness members cashback on every purchase made. This is not points or coupons, it is cash, paid back to the members bank account via the Lyoness system. Here’s a short 2 minute video that explains the concept. Lyoness members therefore actively seek Lyoness partner companies to buy from, whenever they need something, and here’s the critical part – they continue to shop with those Lyoness trading partners!

Therefore, by becoming a Lyoness trading partner, a business will attract and retain new customers via the promotion that Lyoness do within the Lyoness shopping community, and will be able to retain existing customers by encouraging them to become Lyoness shopping members. In addition to this, Lyoness also provides a number of additional income streams for the business, making the program, not only self funding, but also profitable.

Lyoness has been operating in Ireland for just a few months, and is growing extraordinarily fast as forward thinking businesses see the benefits of being part of such a community.

Lyoness are actively seeking new SME trading partners where members can shop, so if you think that a customer loyalty program is something that your business needs, leave a comment with contact information or email me at info@oceanwide.info and I’ll tell you how to get more information.

Who are the easiest customers to sell to?

The easiest customers to sell to are the ones who have bought from you in the past – obvious statement number 2.

Or is it?

Why do so few businesses make little or no effort to keep in touch with their existing customers, never mind try and sell to them again. The hardest part of making a sale is getting the customers attention so that you can try and sell to them.

Isn’t it easier to get the attention of someone who already knows about you and the products and service that you provide, to the extent that they decided to buy from you in the past?

Ask yourself these simple questions, and then ask yourself if they apply to you and your business.

How many business have I spent money with in the last 6 months that asked me for permission to communicate with me or collected my contact details?

How many business have I spent money with in the last 6 months that gave me a voucher, a coupon, or some sort of  offer or incentive to to come back again?

How many business have I spent money with in the last 6 months who called me to ask if I was happy with my purchase and to offer me a ‘customer only special’?

How many business have I spent money with in the last 6 months who offered me the chance to participate in some sort of loyalty rewards program?

Call me cynical if you wish, but if times are hard and the economy is in the toliet, why are most businesses so lazy in the way they nurture their existing customer base?

Because it’s difficult? Perhaps, but so is laying off staff because turnover is down.

Because it’s expensive? What is the lifetime value of a customer? not much I guess if they never come back after the first purchase, but what if they made the same repeat purchase every month or every 3 months for the next 10 years?

So, if you don’t have a plan and a process for retaining your customers and keeping them coming back, then you are losing out big time. A good loyalty program will not only help you retain existing customers but will also draw new customers to you.

For the last 2 years our converted chapel near the town of  JINDRICHUV HRADEC has been the HQ of our Czech Euphony business, which has been run by our good friend Petr. In mid December 2009 we got the news that Euphony, our partner company had been placed in Administration and essentially, that was the end of our Network Marketing adventure with Euphony. 4 years of work, sometimes intense, sometimes very easy going – all gone overnight, leaving a big hole in our income.

Therefore a great time for re-evaluating the need and planning the future direction of our business. We are picking ourselves up and starting again with another business, but it will take us in a different direction, both in business sector and geographically ( more about that in another post later). So we are selling the chapel.

Here’s a few details for you.

It’s a 19th century chapel with an open floor living space about the size of a large badminton court. It has underfloor heating, 2 bedrooms, a bathroom and a beautiful new 21st centruy, properly insulated roof which we installed in 2008.

It is located in the village of Nová Vcelnice, about 10km from  JINDRICHUV HRADEC  in South Moravia, and close to the main road that connects with the Prague to Brno motorway. It is also only about 40km north of the Austrian border from where Vienna can be reached in less than 2 hours.

Because we need to move on quickly, the asking price is only a bargain €189,000. If you know anyone who would be interested then please contact me initially, and I will refer you on to Petr to arrange viewings etc.

I’ve attached a couple of photos to give a general feel of the place.

So what about these athletes then?

Well, reproduced below, is a statement issued by Monavie onNovemeber 20th, about their incredible juice product. I was introduced to this a couple of months ago and I’m spreading the word. My children are both athletes so anything that they can enjoy without fear of getting in trouble with the dope testers is a great benefit for them and for us parents. .

MonaVie Tested for Banned Substances for Athlete’s Reassurance

We are pleased to announce that the MonaVie sold in Europe has been tested and found free of banned substances that are prohibited by the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA).

Now athletes throughout the continent can drink MonaVie with great confidence and assurance that the product is safe to use.

Informed-Choice/HFL Sport Science, one of the top sport supplement testing organizations in the world, recently tested MonaVie at its U.K. laboratory for a range of substances that appear on the WADA prohibited list and found it to be free of these substances.

As part of our efforts to ensure MonaVie products can be safely consumed by professional and amateur athletes as well as the sports-minded consumer, MonaVie entered into a collaborative relationship with Informed-Choice/HFL in August 2009.

MonaVie will continue to conduct independent studies to provide you with the scientific backing to promote the 19 beneficial fruits featured in our MonaVie product.

For more news, stories and information about Monavie, go to http://monaviemediacenter.com/

If you want to use the product yourself and enjoy the benefits, just drop me a line or leave a comment.

Most of it was really silly, but there were a few examples that caught my attention.

In the situations that were set up, people did things that were so obviously inappropriate or not helpful I was just amazed. Now I know one has to make allowances for editorial direction and so on, but it still got me thinking.

People will do as they are told given strong enough direction. Now there’s a big marketing lesson that every business can use.

Let me give you a couple of examples from the TV show

Pizza delivery guy walks along garden path with flower beds either side and up some steps to a door. Child opens door, takes pizza, pays, closes door. Delivery guy walks down steps and starts back along path. Sprinklers either side of path start up.

Delivery guy hesitates, then goes back to the door. Child opens door, hands the guy a face mask and snorkel. The delivery guy puts it on and walks through the water down the path.

How ridiculous is that? Maybe he was exceptionally stupid, but I think that the general point that people will follow direction is a good one.

Another example.

Man standing beside the road wearing dark glasses and with a guide dog beside him. he has a pair of glasses in his hand and he’s polishing them with a cloth. He asks passers by for help. “will you help me put these on?”

The person starts to put the glasses on the man – “no, they’re not mine, they’re for the dog”. the person stops, looks quizzically and then tries to put the glasses on the dog!!!

How many times did you see a dog wearing glasses? And yet here was a blind man, with his dog, saying his dog wears glasses.

People believe what you tell them if the source has some credibility.

So, a couple of serious points from a daft TV show.

People like direction – sad to say, but most people don’t like to think for themselves they like to be given direction.

Establish credibility – then peopel will believe what you tell them and take direction from you.

Can you use this in your business?

Sometimes it inspires us, sometimes it pricks us and causes us to take action to make changes, and sometimes just makes us laugh, or think  “Wow, I wish I had said that”

I’ve been working with a friend of mine, Ray Kirwan for the last couple of months to finalise the development of a brilliant little tool that he has developed. It is a little application that you download and install on your PC. It just sits on your desktop and when you hover your mouse over the little icon, it starts displaying inspirational quotations that you can use to motivate yourself, pause for a mini-meditation, or even just pass the time while you are on hold on the phone. The key thing is that it delivers positive messages into your brain and leads you towards thinking and doing more positive things.

If you like quotes at all, I promise that you will love this. Take a look at the site, scroll down and watch the short introductory video and the ndownload your own copy and give us some feedback so we can make it even better.

http://www.carnegievirtual.com

I guess I was expecting some super magic secret techniques to be revealed but it seems that there isn’t really any secrets. Sure, there are some techiques to use that are specific to the applications and networks that you use but the basic rules are the same as marketing through any other channel.

I’ve been involved in Network Marketing for about 6 years now and many of the same principles apply to marketing via the social networking sites.

Here’s a few bullets, but I’ll refer back to this subject in the future and post some links to some resources.

• You must remember that you are dealing with people, so you need to make a connection and build a releationship that will also build trust.
• People buy from people which is why the first point is so important.
• There are no short cuts – making connections and building relationships takes time and effort.
• You must be yourself – be honest, genuine and sincere – if you aren’t, people will know, even on the internet where they can’t normally see you or hear you.
• Don’t go pitching your product or business to everyone you connect with immediately. Most people using social networking sites are in social mode most of the time, not buying mode, so an overt sales approach is just going to switch people off immediately.

Here’s a really useful pocket definition of some of the main terms that people use when tweeting. You might find it useful as I did.

http://www.seosean.com/blog/definitions-for-twitter-terms