There are many things you can do to cut your costs and lower the risk when you market your business. Your marketing doesn't have to be the bottomless pit of your hard earned money that it’s so often thought of. Your marketing should give you a return on your investment. Follow these top 10 tips and start increasing your bottom line today.

1. Use Only Direct Marketing

Cost: Cost of Direct Marketing Education, Upside Potential: Unlimited

Direct marketing is marketing that is testable and therefore accountable for your money. Put a code on all your ads, coupons etc. so that you know where they come from and can measure the response. Then you can use spreadsheets to calculate exactly what you need to be profitable. It’s vital to crunch the numbers to see if a particular marketing idea you have makes business sense.

2. Find a Product That Fits the Market

Cost: Cost of product/service development, Upside Potential: Unlimited

95% of people out there develop the product first then find a market for it. That’s a lot of wasted time and effort. Take the road less traveled and look for different ways to market something that’s already hot drastically reducing your risk of failure.

3. Test Everything

Cost: Marginal, Upside Potential: Unlimited

Now that you are using direct marketing, test everything. Test your offers, headlines (of your ads), messages, lists, mediums (newspapers, magazines, internet etc.). Most marketing is a few words away from being profitable and you will never know that unless you test.

4. Use Google Ad-words and the Internet.

Cost: Marginal (with daily budget), Upside Potential: Unlimited

Never before in the history of marketing has there ever been a more low-cost, low-risk and accurate way to test your marketing message. You can test different advertisements, different keywords, different web pages and different locations. You can sit in your office in Iceland and test your advertisement in a four block radius around Trump World Tower in Manhattan.

5. Change the Way you Speak and Write,

Cost: Free, Upside Potential: Unlimited

Words offer the highest leverage possible. One word, “cost” creates a negative emotion in your prospects mind as they think of their hard earned money leaving their pocket. Change the word to “invest” and they now think that they can earn more money from the money they give you. Look over the words you use in your business (ads, sales, flyers etc.) to see if they may cause negative emotions in your customers

6. Optimize Your Referral Program

Cost: Marginal, Upside Potential: Unlimited

Referral programs are your highest leverage marketing system out there. Take the time to put in an actual program and not wait until your clients think about it. Of course, that all presupposes that you under promise and over deliver....that always gets them telling their neighbours about you.

7. Upsell and Crossell

Cost: Free, Upside Potential: Upto 50% more sales

Earn 10%-40% more on average with these handy devices. Some people, when they have made the commitment to buy, will buy more when reminded that they can. Don’t be pushy about it. Check out godaddy.com, they are relentless with up sells and cross sells. Try to buy a domain and get your way to the end without spending another dime...just try it...

8. Use Bounce Backs

Cost: cost of paper and ink, Upside Potential: Upto 50% more sales

With every purchase or order, include an offering for another product/service. You have already spent the money on the shipment or transaction. This is another form of low-pressure upsells /cross sells but costs you only the cost of the paper and ink you used.

9. Use Sunk Costs More Creatively

Cost: Free, Upside Potential: Limitless

Do you have a voicemail system? Why play music, when you can give educational messages (that are interesting) about your products/services? Do you have invoices? Write some text about referrals or specials of the day. Do you have slow times? Hold a tele-seminar or actual seminar to educate and attract more business.

10. Increase Your Prices

Cost: Free, Upside Potential: Whatever you set your new price to be

Last but not least...The simplest method of them all. Increase your prices! Lots of businesses I talk to are afraid to do this and they won’t do it. You don’t have to increase them 200% (even though I know a case where a retailer did this and they did actually sell out their entire stock), but just do it 2-5% on select items. No one will notice. And that’s all profit for you. You are doing a disservice to your own bottom line by not charging what the market will bear. You would be surprised to learn how much people would value something. And if they don’t like the increase, try adding some educational information tool with it...now you are justified.

Paul Speziale is a direct marketing consultant / entrepreneur based out of Toronto, Ontario. He has served all industries from manufacturers to retailers, from entrepreneurs to professionals. Besides helping clients, he is working on his own projects. He also volunteers his time for several worthy causes both local and global. You can reach him at: www.AnelloSolutions.com: Growing Your Business Through Low-Risk, Optimized and Results Based Marketing

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