Pittsburgh Marketing

Poor follow up with existing and potential customers — Most of us are guilty of it to some degree and some of us are worse than others.

Just about everyone who has ever been in sales has seen or heard about the costs of gaining a new customer versus the costs of keeping an existing one.

So why do so many of us neglect this simple money making task?

No matter what excuses you might give or how successful your current business is, poor follow up is bad business that costs you money and customers.

Proper follow up is a tried and true method for generating repeat business from existing clients and creating new business from potential prospects and referrals.

Just in case you forgot, we’ll highlight some of the benefits of proper follow up.

Following up with existing customers

In today’s fast paced world, many businesses treat their existing customers like they are products rolling off an assembly line. Once the customer has handed over their cash and trotted out the door or closed their browser, they become just another transaction never to be thought of again.

Why you or your staff should take a little extra time to follow up:

• It shows you appreciate the fact that they chose to do business with you instead of your competitors.
• You can get quality feedback from your customers on their experience with your business.
• It can make you aware of a dissatisfied customer that may not have complained and allow you to win them back instead of having them complain to others, never returning to do business with you again and driving potential customers(their friends and family) away from your business.
• It’s a great time to ask for referrals.
• Great follow up builds more trust and strengthens your relationship with your clients making it much more likely that they will come back to you in the future.
• It makes you stand out above your competitors.

Following up with potential customers

If you truly want to maximize your profits, you should have something in place that will allow you to reach out to potential customers that may have visited your store or website.

In order to acquire their contact info, you can do giveaways, operate a newsletter (online or off), or anything else that will require contact info to be provided.

Why follow up with those who didn’t buy the first time around?:

• It keeps your company and the products or services you offer fresh in your potential customer’s mind.
• Timing is important. By keeping in touch with potential customers, when they really need or want what you are offering, you are more likely to get the business.
• Even if the customer isn’t buying, they may still refer friends or family members who are actively searching for what you offer.

Quality follow up continues to help build better rapport and trust with your potential customers.

With today’s technology, follow up is inexpensive and takes very little time.

Not following up properly can cost you a fortune.

If you have questions or would like some help in creating an automated follow up sytem with customers and prospects, feel free to contact us today.

Figuring out which free Pittsburgh Classified ad sites to use can be confusing, frustrating, irritating, and a whole slew of other negative adjectives.

It can also be profitable when done properly.

We tend to focus on local Pittsburgh advertising sites that are actually “local” because they normally contain less garbage than the sites that have advertising for a bunch of cities around the country. Many of these sites are being ruined by automated spambots and simply can not be monitored closely enough to eliminate most of the junk. They also lack any local promotion by traditional means, i.e., newspapers, television, radio, etc. So they have very little brand recognition and rely solely on organic search results.

The sites that we normally use in our free advertising, for business or personal use, are our own Pittsburgh Classifieds, the Pittsburgh Pennysaver, and craigslist(this is one that isn’t actually “local” but has provided results). If you’ve found a free classified site for Pittsburgh that has worked for you, please feel free to comment and help our users.

With that, here are some advantages and disadvantages of free Pittsburgh classified sites:

Advantages

• Cost – free says it all. When you find a site that works for you, it becomes well worth the few minutes of your time to set up an account and post your ads.
• Convenient – many of these sites make reposting your ad very simple. Our Shop The Burgh site, for example sends out an email a couple days before the ad expires allowing users to renew their ad simply by logging in to their account.
• Targeted – like most worthwhile internet advertising, your ads are generally seen only by those people looking for what you are promoting. You pick the category/subcategory, so you know visitors from that site are actually interested in what you have to offer.

Disadvantages

• Spam/Junk posting – as mentioned earlier, many free classifieds sites are littered with junk and spam from automated posting software. Before taking the time to register and post, review the categories you are interested to see how much garbage the site has. Even if there is a significant amount of spam posts, it may still be worth a few minutes of your time to run a test ad. Then check your stats to see if traffic is being generated. If you are getting traffic, it may be worthwhile to keep posting there.
• Emails from the ad sites: always read the terms of service when posting free ads to see if the ad sites mention whether or not your email address will be marketed to by them or sold to third parties. Most won’t, especially truly local sites that rely solely on local visitors. But just beware and take a few moments to search the net for the site’s name and the term spam.
• Time is not free – while no actual money is spent, our time is money. Track your ad results from these free Pittsburgh classified sites, test a few different subject lines and wording of your ads, then decide if it’s worth continuing to use that site.
• Brief exposure – if the section you are posting in gets a lot of ads, your stay on the front page may be very brief, possibly only a few hours. This can be a double edged sword. High traffic means a lot of potential viewers, but it also means your timing would have to be just right to catch some customers before your ad is pushed off the first page. Again, checking stats and playing around with ad copy, different times of day to post, etc. can
  help determine if it’s worth the effort.