CHAPTER 95

IMPROVE ON WHAT WORKED BEFORE

This may seem strange to point out, but on multiple occasions I've had an “aha moment” with clients when I asked them one simple question.

That simple question is this: What did you do last year that worked best? Or, what was the best marketing idea you ever used to help grow your business?

Better yet, what are you doing to sell more things to your most loyal customers?

As entrepreneurs I think we have a tendency to be so forward-looking that we forget to look back and review what we've done that did and didn't work. If you don't have an established location where you store records of the ideas that have and haven't worked for you, then odds are you aren't addressing this issue properly. I like to use a tool called evernote from EverNote.com for this purpose. It's a free downloadable app that you should look into.

Spend some time thinking back on the last few years of your business and try to recall the promotions or ideas that worked best. Revisit those ideas and see if there are any ways that you could automate or expand on them in order to make them better than ever.

An active member of OfflineBiz.com, and a respected colleague of mine, Hanif Khaki1 does a lot of marketing consulting with various businesses. He recently sent me a couple of stories that are a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

In the first example, Hanif was able to get over 10 percent of an insurance broker's current clients to sign up for a new e-mail list and ...

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