Customers are tough to find and sometimes even tougher to keep. It’s one of the reasons it’s important to keep your customers active and “in the loop” so to speak. The more you communicate and connect with your customers the more likely they are to remain with you.

Here are a few tips to reawaken sleeping customers.

#1 Send them a newsletter. If you don’t already have an autoresponder/newsletter. Start one. Send your customer list an invitation to subscribe. Make sure your first trial issue or email is engaging and offers a tremendous benefit. You may even want to include a special promotion for sign ups, a coupon or a free download.

#2 Connect with them on social networking sites. True, not all of your customers are going to have a social media presence, however the ones that do, you can connect with. Send them a hello message, follow them and invite them to follow you. You can also offer a special promotion for people who follow you or fan your Facebook page. The incentive can be a coupon or a free download.

#3 Start a loyalty program. Loyalty programs work well because they offer rewards for recurring purchases. They help a customer feel like a valued part of your community. And they help your customer feel as if they’re getting more than their money’s worth.

#4 Send your customer a personal message. Have you ever received a postcard in the mail from a pizza delivery place you haven’t called in a while? It’s the “We miss you” type of card that comes with a coupon or promotion on the flip side. You can accomplish the same thing via email. Send your sleeping customers a “we miss you” email message and include a please come back type of coupon code or discount offer. Sometimes it’s all the motivation a person needs to make a purchase.

#5 Ask for feedback. Maybe your customers needs have changed and you’re no longer able to meet them. Tough, I know. However you won’t know unless you ask. And the information may be able to help you strengthen and grow your business and earn back that customer.

Sleeping customers sleep for a reason. Engage them; bring them back into your fold by making them an offer they can’t refuse. If they still don’t come back, don’t hesitate to ask them why? Your customers are your most valued asset. Treat them well and they’ll stay customers for life.

Why You Should Use Personal Branding

Personal branding adds your touch to the business. Personal branding goes well beyond a sleek logo or a perfect tag line. It is a way of sharing your expertise and own set of values with your target market.

Personal branding helps a lot in establishing rapport with your clients. A sense of connection is formed leading to trust and confidence of your market to get what they need from you.

In a business world where competition is very stiff, other marketers can steal your concept, your tools, and your system. There will also come a time when your patent for your product will expire. Personal branding attaches your identity with the goods or services that you sell.

People will know it is you when they see something on the market. If they trust you, they trust what you offer them.

Tips on Building your Personal Brand

Building a personal brand is not an easy task. It does not come in a package nor is it achieved overnight.

Here are some tips to get you started in building your brand:

• Run your own blog – If you want to be seen as an authority in the business, you should have a site devoted to it. You can also receive important feedback from your followers and potential clients.
• Distribute information online – You can write free ebooks or newsletter and distribute this to your list or potential customers. This can help you as an affiliate marketer in building trust with your market.
• Publish write-ups on trade publications – Print is still a very powerful medium. People can get their ideas and business sources by reading magazines and journals. You will develop the authority in your field through this effort.
• Give seminars and webinars – These talking engagements put the spotlight on you and serve as a good venue to show your expertise. You can also push for your services or products during these events.

Affiliate marketing is like standing in a crowded room where everyone is wearing a black suit, donning the same shoes, and sporting the same smile. It is a crowded business and people will have a hard time seeing you. Personal branding magnets the attention of the market to you and puts a spotlight on what you can give them.

The idea that the cyclical nature of the economy makes recessions a great time for entrepreneurs goes as follows; the economy runs in ups and downs. Right now it’s down, but it won’t be forever. It will recover, likely to a point even stronger than it once was. Why is this good for entrepreneurs? Because starting a business now, while the economy is down, means that your business will be established when the economy recovers, making the timing perfect for explosive growth or even better, to sell!

In theory, this is actually a fairly valid point. After all, if you start a business in a boom and your growth is strong, when the next recession hits, you’ll have to hold on to that struggling business and deal with all the problems established business deal with in recession, and hope for the best. If you want to sell, you’ll either have sell in a buyers market like no other, or you’ll just have to wait! However, if you start your business in a recession, it’s the opposite.

Your costs are low because you’re still small. You won’t have to worry about layoffs and massive cost cutting, because you’re haven’t incurred enough major operating costs or enough staff to make it necessary. If you can grow your business a bit and establish yourself in the hard times, when the good times roll out again (and most people decide to launch start-ups), you’ll be in good shape to take advantage of all the associated opportunities. If you decide to sell, you’ll be selling an established business in a time when money is flowing and the market is in your favor as a seller.

The unfortunate part is that it’s not as easy to launch a successful start-up when the collective chips are down. Capital is hard enough to come by when the economy is doing alright, let alone when people are being squeezed. Angels and VC firms won’t be investing as much as they would be in good times, and sources of funding closer to home like friends and relatives will probably be even more dried up.

Boot-strapping will be an absolute necessity, and money will be extremely tight. It won’t be easy to get off the ground and get going, but it’s far from impossible. So if you’ve got an idea on the shelf that you thought you’d leave for a sunnier time, dust off and seriously analyze whether or not you could get it going, even in a limited form, with the means available to you now. If the answer is yes, it could result in a serious advantage down the road.

The second argument the author of the article made in favor of our current situation was related to hiring and the amount of talent available. So it goes, and logically so, the massive amounts of layoffs that have been going on have freed up a lot of very talented people from the jobs that once made them inaccessible to you. Likewise, the lack of jobs out there right now due to companies restricting hiring have lowered the compensation expectations of this newly available talent to levels far below the salaries they’d demand in prosperous times.

What does this add up to? Talented, cheap, available professionals who may very well now be in your price range, which they weren’t four years ago, and probably won’t be four years from now. So hunt them down. Best case scenario, your business takes off and when times get good, you’ll be able to afford their inflated expectations. Worst case scenario, you won’t be able to afford them, they’ll leave, but you’ll still have had a top notch professional working for your business for as long as they’re around, and the impact they may have could be substantial.

Again, it’s a little easier said than done. Hiring the right people is always difficult regardless of the economic situation businesses face, but the fact remains, the level of talent available at a certain compensation level will always be higher during recessionary times than it will in prosperous times. A top notch pro who demands $150,000 a year when things are good may very well accept $85,000 a year to come work for you after their old company is forced to cut them loose. So if by some form of magic you have money to spare in your hiring budget, do NOT horde it. Spend it. It may be the best money you spend during the entire recession.

First of all, and most importantly in my opinion, equity financing can bring highly valuable knowledge and experience on board. If you can obtain an investor with relevant knowledge or experience in the field of your start-up, or even just in general business, it can be one of the best moves your company can make. When an investor comes on board, they put their money on the line and take a vested interest in seeing your company succeed. You could stand to benefit a lot by having someone on board with enough knowledge, experience or connections to help your business get off the ground. That person or group could end up being your company’s most valuable asset.

Secondly, as mentioned earlier, equity investment doesn’t come with the nagging possibility of going broke and being stuck having to pay back a lender. Anyone who comes on board as an investor will generally do so fully understanding that they’ve assumed the same risk you have, which is that the possibility of failure is ever-present. Knowing this can be comforting in the start-up stages when things are unstable, especially if you’ve decided to go into business in a risky field. Keep in mind though, the riskier the business, the bigger a piece of the pie the investor will likely ask for in exchange for their investment dollars.

So there are definitely very real advantages to equity financing, and it very well may be right for you. The purpose of this series of posts was simply to get you to realize that debt financing also has a set of very real upsides. Neither debt nor equity is superior to the other, they’re simply different. As such, it’s important that you thoroughly investigate your options with both when looking for capital for your business. Don’t just jump on the equity train because it seems to be the popular choice. The benefits of debt (benefits of debt…that just sounds strange) may very well make it the choice for you!

Firstly, while debt may seem expensive, the cost of borrowing can be, for the most part, considered a short-term cost, at least for start-ups. The debt you’ll be taking on will not likely be on a term of more than a few years. On the other hand, equity financing is forever. When you sell someone part of your business, it’s for good. The only way you can get that back is to buy it back. Consider that and you may come to realize that equity financing can in fact be far more expensive than debt financing when you look at the long term.

If you assume you can build a successful business (a big assumption for most, but humour me), then looking at the cost across the lifetime of your business paints a very different picture than the short term view. In the long term, years after you’ve become successful, that debt you took on to get off the ground will be a distant memory. On the other hand, that chunk of the business you sold will still be in someone else’s pocket, and they’ll have a claim to a piece of your profit pie year in and year out.

Secondly, debt financing leaves control of your business in your hands. You’re responsible to repay that debt, plus the interest, but the lenders generally won’t get in your hair about how you run your business (unless things get really bad). This is a huge advantage. When you raise capital by selling equity, you now have a responsibility to a shareholder or partner. And if that shareholder takes on a large chunk of ownership, you can bet they’re going to want to have a say in how things get done. Rightfully so, too! They’ve put their own money on the line, and they deserve a voice in how things get done.

This might not sound so bad, and in some cases it isn’t, but in some cases, it can be awful. You may take on an investor who you soon find out doesn’t share your vision, decides they don’t believe in your abilities, or are just a general pain in the ass. And you’ll be fully accountable to that pain in the ass! Debt financing on the other hand doesn’t bring with it the possibility of losing control of your own company.

So when is equity financing a good way to go? Check out Part Three of Debt vs. Equity to find out!