Page 37 - 101 Ways to Market Your Business

101 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS

together can form a very strong alliance. For example,
imagine two cleaning companies helping each other and
working together. Imagine for a second that these two
companies decide that if either is too busy to do a job
when a customer calls they will recommend the other.
If one runs short on cleaning chemicals out of hours the
other will help out. They can agree on the boundaries and
the clients that each company will target (be very careful
when it comes to pricing as it is illegal to fix prices in
many countries).

If you are lucky enough to be able to work with your
competition, that is fantastic. If not, at least make a point
of knowing and understanding what the competition offers
so that you can offer more.

Have you had bad experiences with
marketing in the past?

I often hear business operators saying that they tried this
or they tried that and it didn’t work. They then make
amazing statements such as television advertising is a waste
of money or newspaper advertising doesn’t work. I try to
suggest that there are a lot of factors that make marketing
work and you need to have as many of them on your side
as possible to get results.

I remember several years ago a friend of mine who runs
a prominent tourist attraction ran a Mother’s Day special
offer in the newspaper. The advertisement said that all
mothers could have free admission on Mother’s Day. The
newspaper made a mistake and doubled the size of the
advertisement. The result was amazing and the attraction
had their busiest day on record.

The following year they ran the same advertisement
again at the larger size thinking that it was the size of the

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