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xpi0t0s

Forget email as a marketing tool. Only email those customers who are genuinely interested, i.e. those who have OPTED IN to something that can easily be OPTED OUT of (one click and it's done).

Setup a website that contains all your marketing info. Make customers want to stay, i.e. make sure you publish ALL relevant information - specifications, prices, example installations etc. Make sure any potential customer's questions are answered (FAQ sections are good, and this is often just marketing blurb turned into Q/A format). Imagine you've got a shop and a mute salesman, and your website is a brochure he presses into the hands of potential customers who walk through your shop door. They're going to have questions. What do you sell? What are the prices? What are the differences between models?

Don't bother with "page rank". Make it a good reference site and it'll rise through the ranks on its own.

Forget "click here to enter" screens. I'm sure they give marketroids orgasms but customers HATE them. Really they do. I just HAVE entered your site, why are you asking me to click somewhere to enter? Is being on example.org/index.htm somehow NOT in your site, whereas example.org/index1.htm is? Honestly, sometimes when I see that I just know it's going to be a webshite.

Don't muck around with navigation controls. Don't override the back button. Don't make links open in new window all the time (we all know about right-click/Open In New Window). HTML is a powerful markup language; use it! Don't assume you need Flash for everything - you don't; it's slow and crap and people hate flash shites.

Hide prices and you make people wonder what you're hiding. Or you make them think "it's one of those places where if you need to ask the price, you can't afford it". Don't take people for idiots; set prices at cost of materials plus labour plus a reasonable profit, and where you can't give exact figures give the figures you can and give several example installations so that potential customers can pick the installation that's closest to their situation and work out their own approximate price. Quote prices up front and you'll stop people thinking "these people are just out to gouge me for as much money as they can get, the price will be what they think I can afford and NOT a reasonable price based on costs."

Double glazing firms come to mind. You _cannot_ get prices out of them and they've been installing the products for decades. They can't possibly not know what it's going to cost to install the stuff, so either they're in gouge mode or they're absolutely crap at their trade, either way I wouldn't deal with them.

Playing silly bu99ers with prices doesn't impress people. We had a quote for one of those rooftop solar water heaters. First of all they refused to see me on my own and insisted my wife had to be present, which should have told me what shenanigans were coming. £6000 if we signed up on the night (we don't do that as a matter of policy), £8000 if we didn't. Er, how exactly does that work? Two *grand* cheaper if we sign up on the night? High pressure sales tactics my friend, and this earnt them a big F CK OFF in my mind, only going further because we thought there might have been something in it worth considering. And a few months down the line, hey, what a surprise, coincidentally the prices have just dropped and now it's £4000. Now I'm thinking WTF is going on here - how do I know that 4K isn't also some vastly overpriced random nonsense plucked out of the air? 4K is solid proof that the 8K was AT LEAST a 100 percent overcharge.

Oh, and you'll like this: the other condition for the £6K deal was that we gave them names and addresses of our friends and family so they could pressure them too. No f cking way. Not standing for that. They can go to the wall as far as I'm concerned.

And their final trick when they did persuade me that the new 4K job was worth considering was to consider a request for a quote as an order. I should have been suspicious when they wanted to credit check me to give me the quote. They insisted I had placed an order, which I most definitely hadn't. This was the final nail in the coffin of the discussion with them, the company name was made up of three parts; where they got the energy from, where they installed the product, and what they got from the sun, and the whole may or may not rhyme with Roller Comb Synergy. Idiots.

xpi0t0s Mentor
26Mar2009,14:36
	Forget email as a marketing tool. Only email those customers who are genuinely interested, i.e. those who have OPTED IN to something that can easily be OPTED OUT of (one click and it's done). Setup a website that contains all your marketing info. Make customers want to stay, i.e. make sure you publish ALL relevant information - specifications, prices, example installations etc. Make sure any potential customer's questions are answered (FAQ sections are good, and this is often just marketing blurb turned into Q/A format). Imagine you've got a shop and a mute salesman, and your website is a brochure he presses into the hands of potential customers who walk through your shop door. They're going to have questions. What do you sell? What are the prices? What are the differences between models? Don't bother with "page rank". Make it a good reference site and it'll rise through the ranks on its own. Forget "click here to enter" screens. I'm sure they give marketroids orgasms but customers HATE them. Really they do. I just HAVE entered your site, why are you asking me to click somewhere to enter? Is being on example.org/index.htm somehow NOT in your site, whereas example.org/index1.htm is? Honestly, sometimes when I see that I just know it's going to be a webshite. Don't muck around with navigation controls. Don't override the back button. Don't make links open in new window all the time (we all know about right-click/Open In New Window). HTML is a powerful markup language; use it! Don't assume you need Flash for everything - you don't; it's slow and crap and people hate flash shites. Hide prices and you make people wonder what you're hiding. Or you make them think "it's one of those places where if you need to ask the price, you can't afford it". Don't take people for idiots; set prices at cost of materials plus labour plus a reasonable profit, and where you can't give exact figures give the figures you can and give several example installations so that potential customers can pick the installation that's closest to their situation and work out their own approximate price. Quote prices up front and you'll stop people thinking "these people are just out to gouge me for as much money as they can get, the price will be what they think I can afford and NOT a reasonable price based on costs." Double glazing firms come to mind. You _cannot_ get prices out of them and they've been installing the products for decades. They can't possibly not know what it's going to cost to install the stuff, so either they're in gouge mode or they're absolutely crap at their trade, either way I wouldn't deal with them. Playing silly bu99ers with prices doesn't impress people. We had a quote for one of those rooftop solar water heaters. First of all they refused to see me on my own and insisted my wife had to be present, which should have told me what shenanigans were coming. £6000 if we signed up on the night (we don't do that as a matter of policy), £8000 if we didn't. Er, how exactly does that work? Two grand cheaper if we sign up on the night? High pressure sales tactics my friend, and this earnt them a big F CK OFF in my mind, only going further because we thought there might have been something in it worth considering. And a few months down the line, hey, what a surprise, coincidentally the prices have just dropped and now it's £4000. Now I'm thinking WTF is going on here - how do I know that 4K isn't also some vastly overpriced random nonsense plucked out of the air? 4K is solid proof that the 8K was AT LEAST a 100 percent overcharge. Oh, and you'll like this: the other condition for the £6K deal was that we gave them names and addresses of our friends and family so they could pressure them too. No f cking way. Not standing for that. They can go to the wall as far as I'm concerned. And their final trick when they did persuade me that the new 4K job was worth considering was to consider a request for a quote as an order. I should have been suspicious when they wanted to credit check me to give me the quote. They insisted I had placed an order, which I most definitely hadn't. This was the final nail in the coffin of the discussion with them, the company name was made up of three parts; where they got the energy from, where they installed the product, and what they got from the sun, and the whole may or may not rhyme with Roller Comb Synergy. Idiots.