WOW….The NEW Octopus Solution
June 18th, 2010
Welcome to The Octopus Solution’s New Website which now embeds our Blog. Please enjoy the blog posts and new website.
We are working to deliver more content on our blog and How-To-Guides on our website for you to download and gain access to much of our success with clients. Our projects are very successful for clients, like increasing a YMCA’s Member Retention rate from 37% to 52% and growing, in just several months. How we do that is available through our How-To- Guides.
We are excited to present our new Blog and Website and will be adding features, bells and whistles over the next week for you!
Thank you for being the BEST with your Business and following our blog,
Eric & Bill, Co-Founders
Revenue Generating Tip
May 18th, 2010
Attention small business owner we are all in the same boat; down economy, new president, new promises, less consumer spending, uncertain future, and bills that just keep coming. So how do we manage to make it through these times without having to dip into that line of credit one more time? Better yet, how can we grow in an economy such as this?
The number one strategy for generating business in this economy is to create and deliver consistent communication to your current customers who in turn have a greater potential to increase the frequency of return and purchasing. Once your company has a customer base this becomes one of the most important areas of your business. The overall goal is to turn an existing customer into a repeat customer. According to Source, “Acquiring a customer costs five to ten times more than retaining one. Repeat customers spend, on average, 67% more. After 10 purchases a customer has referred as many as 7 other people.”
This statistic can be a wake up call to the small business owner. Small businesses, in general, connect more with their customers compared to large corporations. With this “customer connection” all we need is a system in place to reach out to them. It can be as easy as a phone call or more sophisticated such as an email newsletter. Either way we want to constantly connect with our customers so we will increase their likelihood of doing business with us again.
This is what is we refer to as Internal Marketing. Marketing that is focused solely on your current customer base. This type of marketing is key because it is inexpensive and you already have a captive audience who already knows you and has already done business with you. It’s a no-brainer! We know that money can be tough as a small business owner so using your current resources to produce revenue is a win-win; we spend less and gain more.
Strategy – It is not just fancy words on paper! (part 1)
March 18th, 2010
Strategy is defined as setting, planning, and executing the goals of your company, which will determine the direction of your business in the short and long term. Setting goals and objectives for the company takes into consideration factors that will inform and educate you so that facts are used in decision-making.
The world moves very quickly in this day and age and companies need to be able to improvise, adapt, and overcome very quickly when things shift. Strategies can be long term, such as “where do you see your business in five years?”
The short-term focus is far more important given the speed at which the world moves, but those short-term goals must be linked as steps to achieving the long-term objectives. When we set goals for the short term, twelve months, we set three to five objectives that we think we can accomplish in a one year. Why three to five? Because that is how many tasks we can effectively manage. More than three to five objectives can create more problems than successes.
In tomorrow’s blog we will give you the very detailed steps of how we create strategy that is done in a way that can be executed. We will get preparing now for our post tomorrow.