Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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Don't Get Sequestered: Gain Market share by LOUIS FERACA Part 2 –A Business Survival Guide In Part 1 of this series, I told you about various methods for locking in customer loyalty. In this installment, we'll discuss strategies for gaining new customers without spending an arm and a leg. Of course, this advice will become moot if Congress offers any more of the "help" they've been giving us and we find ourselves living in caves (an EPA-approved, naturally occurring residential structure) and without fire (a hazardous, carbonproducing combustion unsafe within a residence). But supposing blessed gridlock returns and the federal government does nothing to make things worse, there are three things the average business can do to gain market share. One is advertise, advertise and advertise. Second is promotional product-based marketing and promotions. And third is a hybrid of the two. In order to make any advertising plan effective and efficient, you have to first identify your "best buyer." A best buyer is the customer who hits the sweet spot of your product or service. They love you and you love them. They buy repeatedly in the middle to upper end of your product price scale. They refer their family and friends. You might be able to describe your best buyer right off the top of your head, but most companies would need to do a little data farming in order to learn the common characteristics of their best buyer. They may come from a certain geographic area or be a certain age. In order to find out, you may need to have questionnaires at your point of sale or on your website. Or you can train your staff to ask questions. But it's well worth your time to find out. Once you have identified your best buyer, you can craft and place ads that are tailored to attract other people just like them. What paper or magazine does your best buyer read? What radio station(s) do they listen to? What billboard do they pass daily? Knowing whom your best buyer is let's you save a lot of money by efficiently targeting ads straight at them. The ads will be more effective, run less places and bring in more revenue. Another highly effective and efficient form of marketing is through promotional products. First, you have to choose the product. Decide how much you can afford, then, with the help of a professional, choose a useful item that displays your logo well and conveys the impression you want. Once you have the item, there are three ways to distribute it. • They can be handed to prospects that visit your business but aren't yet ready to buy or they can be handed to prospects at events like trade shows and festivals. • Mail the product to prospective customers. This works particularly well if you can narrow the mailing to a list of your best buyers or an area that is full of them. A letter or card with an extended ad message should accompany the item. The card will likely be tossed after reading but the promo item will be kept and continue supporting the ad message for weeks, months or even years. • Run a "gift with purchase" or "gift with visit" promotion where you offer an enticing gift in return for a customer making some level of purchase or just for walking in the door. Gift with purchase promotions are particularly effective if supported by an advertising campaign that again targets the best buyer. (See chart) A mailer to this small group of people (that includes a photo of the gift they can earn) can be very inexpensive yet powerful. What if you send 1,000 mailers and just 10 percent respond? That's 100 new best buyers. A thousand mailers at 50 cents per (or less) are only $500. Add the cost of 100 gifts at maybe $5 each and you have a $1,000 investment to gain 100 best buyers. The higher the price point of the product you sell the higher the value of the gift should be. You can do any one or all of these things, but do something! Sitting around and moping about the tough economy will only help your competition. In the next installment I'll write about the difficulties retaining key employees when LOUIS FERACA, Contributing Writer. cash flow is squeezing the COMMENTS? editor@upandcominpayroll. Good selling. gweekly.com Crime of the Century All the President's Men Revisited takes a fresh look at the Watergate scandal TV by DEAN ROBBINS You couldn't ask for a better reevaluation of the Watergate scandal than All the President's Men Revisited (Sunday, 9 pm, Discovery). Robert Redford narrates the story of President Richard Nixon's downfall, drawing on interviews with the journalists who broke the story (Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein), Nixon henchmen (Alexander Butterfield, John Dean) and media commentators (Rachel Maddow, David Frost). The two-hour production features juicy video and audio from the early '70s, including snippets from Nixon's notorious White House tapes. In one Oval Office conversation, shortly after Nixon thugs were caught breaking into Democratic headquarters, an aide smugly assured his boss that nothing would come of a criminal investigation. "It would make a funny goddamn movie," he said. The investigation did become a movie — Redford's All the President's Men — but it sure wasn't very funny. Interviewees assess the damage Nixon did to the nation with, as Frost delicately puts it, his "dislocated relationship with the truth." (Translation: He was a dirty liar.) Maddow notes the irony of a self-described "law-andorder administration" engaging in criminal activity that landed 16 aides in prison. Only one person onscreen believes Nixon got a raw deal: former speechwriter Ben Stein. "It's really sad," Stein blubbers, wiping away tears. "I think he was a saint." Now that's funny. Mary and Martha Saturday, 8 pm (HBO) Mary and Martha has all the hallmarks of a Disease of the Week TV movie. Two women (Hilary Swank, Brenda Blethyn) have blissfully happy experiences with their sons for the first 30 minutes, then fall apart when the boys die — 22 UCW APRIL 17-23, 2013 here, in South Africa, from malaria. The mothers dedicate themselves to fighting the disease, and the movie turns into an admirable call to action. "Admirable call to action" and "great drama" are often mutually exclusive, but not in Mary and Martha. Director Philip Noyce attends to pacing and cinematography, and he's particularly skillful at evoking the fever dream of grief. The script makes time for psychological complexity, daring to portray Swank's Mary as less than a saint. And Swank, as you'd expect from the star of Boys Don't Cry, earns her paycheck with another portrait of a woman in extremis. Mary bears some responsibility for her son's death, having twisted his arm to home-school him in Africa. We continue to sympathize with her even as we see that she's following in the footsteps of her despised father (James Woods), who always put his own desires over those of his family. Did I say Swank earns her paycheck? For this subtle characterization, she deserves a bonus. Lovestruck: The Musical Sunday, 8 pm (ABC Family) NBC poured massive resources into creating a TV musical and came up with the lumbering smash. Meanwhile, ABC Family has created a TV-movie musical that's effortlessly entertaining with a fraction of the budget. Jane Seymour stars as an aging dancer who takes a swig of youth potion without knowing it. "Kinda minty," she says, just before being magically transformed in mind and body. Now a lithe blond bombshell, she sets out to prove that her daughter's fiancé is a cad — by seducing him herself. Unlike Smash, Lovestruck handles heavy emotions with a light touch. The musical numbers sparkle, and the cast members know just how seriously to take the fairy-tale plot — i.e., not very. The production is, to coin a phrase, kinda minty. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM