Are You Taking Advantage of Auxiliary Services?

  • Written by Josh
  • Posted September 24, 2008 at 6:19 am

This guest post is from Chelle, a freelance real estate marketing assistant and writer. If you enjoy this post, be sure to check out her real estate marketing blog for more marketing ideas. If you would like to guest post on the Unconventional Marketing Blog go to the guest post page to learn more.

There’s a very simple question that many marketers and businesses fail to ask themselves:

“What do people need?”

We think we know the answer to this, since most businesses offer specific products/services that meet specific needs. For example, if you are sick, you see a doctor. If you need your car fixed, you go to a mechanic. If you need to buy something, you go to a store. You have a need; the business meets it.

But what many businesses fail to recognize is most consumers typically have more than “a need”. We usually have several needs. And on top of needs, we have wants, too. When you think like a customer you can identify these needs and wants and use them to enhance their experience. Enhancing their experience is one easy to implement strategy for attracting and retaining new customers, and for many businesses can even be an additional source of income.

Thinking like your customers is as easy as asking yourself these questions:

  • Why does the customer need my product/service?
  • What will the customer need while using my product/service?
  • What will the customer do before and after using my product and/or service?

You should be able to come up with a decent sized list of things you can do to meet these extra needs of the customer. Some of these things you may not be able to provide yourself – but you could partner with existing businesses to extend your auxiliary services through referrals. Referrals, when chosen wisely, can not only bring more business to you, but also increase potential income if you are able to collect a small referral fee or commission.

To give you a few ideas on how you can use auxiliary services, here are a few examples of add-on services a business could provide:

  • Shopping centers offering childcare so parents (and other shoppers!) can shop in peace
  • Doctors calling in prescriptions ahead of time so the customer doesn’t have to wait in line
  • Mechanics offering pick-up and drop-off services for your vehicle so you don’t have to go through the hassle of dropping your car off
  • A vet offering medications, grooming supplies, and referrals to dog walking services or groomers
  • A wedding planner referring a caterer, reception hall, musician, travel agency, or florist
  • A moving company offering packing services, boxes, and property clean-up services
  • A web based business providing forums or automated call center for support

There are endless possibilities when you start thinking like a customer and what they need. The more you offer, the more your business will grow and become profitable. Just be careful you don’t get too big or too far off base from your business – most customers would not be too keen on having surgery at an auto repair shop!

Are you thinking like your customer? Do you understand what they need? What auxiliary add-on services could you provide to enhance their experience while expanding your business?

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3 Lessons of marketing deployment

  • Written by Josh
  • Posted September 5, 2008 at 12:04 pm

I put together a short list of things I need to remind myself from time to time. These are just a couple of examples that make business, marketing and products all the more better when done right.

1. Marketing is made much easier with a product.

So many times people jump the gun on marketing and forget to develop a good product in an attempt to cash in on those marketing dollars. Marketing and products go hand-in-hand. To have a successful campaign in affiliate marketing, the local mom and pop store, selling shoes or whatever the case might be requires a balance between product and placement.

I know this seems very logical, but I know from my own experience that I can get very excited about things and tend to overlook some of the small details. This is when having a plan of attack and sticking to it helps. If you develop a worth-while product that people truly can use, the marketing can be much easier provided there is synergy. Develop a plan and think things through before acting them out. In the end you will save a lot of time and energy.

2. Not all products have to be useful, but the marketing has to be truthful.

People sell things all the time that no one has a use for, but they are fun, quirky, silly, bizarre, colorful, you name it. As long as the marketing that surrounds that product is telling the truth, then there is no issue with how or what is being sold. On the flip side of the coin, you can’t make people believe your product does something it doesn’t (not ethically at least).

It goes without saying that people will buy anything they latch onto at any given time. I have a friend who still buys Hot Wheels at a drop of a hat. He likes to collect Hot Wheels and views them as a neat way to splurge. But if a product is misrepresenting itself or claims to do things that it can’t, word will get around eventually that either the product or the creator cannot be trusted.

3. Market to the talkers

People in general love to talk, especially about things that have captivated their attention, are unique, highly useful and so on. People will also talk about things they didn’t like or find useful. How many times have you been in the store contemplating which item you are going to buy when a stranger out of nowhere appears and recommends one product over the other? I am sure this happens to me or someone next to me at least once a month. You want to get your product in the hands of the people like that who are doing the talking.

If your product / service is good, they will be sure to let you know also the reverse is true as well. Then it is a matter of you enabling them to talk and share with others about your product or finding a way to channel that input into bettering the product. Yes, that is correct, even bad comments and remarks are a good thing. This probably explains why software always has a never version or release. Could you imagine if we were all still running Windows 98?

I recently saw an ad on TV about some Microsoft experiment that was letting people try Microsoft’s newest operating system Vista under a different name. Then after all of the good comments and ooohs and awwws they told the participants it was Vista all along. I have to admit I was one of the ones who refused to switch to Vista until hell froze over. After being forced to use it I don’t have any notable complaints other than being on a learning curve. I am sure in the end I will adapt to the software and the software will adapt to me.

Anyways the list can go on and on forever, but ultimately it is up to you as a marketer and producer to establish what your baseline for service and quality will be.

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Filed under: Business, Effective Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Ideas, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Suggestions, Product, Services, Uncategorized, Unconventional Marketing