Keep ‘em Talking

Starting a bit of buzz about your business isn’t particularly difficult. If you create a good product or service, people will naturally take to it, and talk about it. That leads to referrals, recommendations, loyal customers and a general buzz about what you do. For an established business, or a new one that’s struggling to get going, then ‘buzz’ can be kick started through effective advertising and savvy marketing techniques.

But what happens 6 months, a year or even 10 years down the line? How do you keep people talking about your business and spreading the word when they already know you exist and the first flush of your advertising budget is long since spent?

Keeping people talking about your business comes down to two things – keeping the message fresh and keeping the lines of communication open.

Keeping the message fresh – No matter what type of business you are in, once people have heard what you have to say (over and over and over again) the effectiveness of that message starts to decline. Of course, you want consistency to help establish your brand image but you also need to spice things up from time to time to keep people’s interest.

Imagine a brand new shop with a big sign outside that says ‘SALE’ in ten-foot tall red letters. Initially the shop and sign will receive a lot of attention but fast forward two years the sign is faded and torn and the passing trade, so used to seeing it every day, no longer take any notice. You could get a bigger sign with twenty-foot letters but unless you change the message it will still be an uphill battle.

So how do you change the message? Introducing new products and services from time to time is one option. McDonald’s introduces ‘limited time’ menu items, Coke brings out new designs and special edition flavours (Vanilla Coke anyone?).

If you can’t change the product, then you can tailor your message to new markets or make it more specific to certain niches within your market. A bar can hold a student night, a café, target offices with sandwich delivery. And, of course, you can always use special offers, discounts, sales and added extras to change the message in the short term.

The specifics that you use will be dependent on your own creativity and knowledge of your market, but creatively minded or not, every business should look for ways to spice up their message – whilst keeping the core of what your business is about consistent.

Keeping the lines of communication open is somewhat more straightforward. The biggest asset of any business, in any industry, should be its database of customers and interested parties. Making a splash in the market as a whole through advertising and promotion is expensive – contacting people who are already disposed to liking and using your business is much easier and cheaper.

Start this process now – find ways to capture the right info and keep in touch with your existing customers and they’ll happily keep ‘buzzing’ about you.

Taken together, these two points develop a long-term strategy that makes the most of your marketing and your business looking and sounding fresh and forward-thinking – and people talking.