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Consumer opinion is vital for any company. Whether you are launching a new service or product line, it’s important to know how your clients and prospective customers will react. However, it can be difficult to get people to spend time taking a survey. When you need the feedback and timing is of the essence, sometimes using an incentive is just the thing you need to add extra mileage to a survey campaign.

There are several way to put this type of program in place. The determining factor for which you choose should be determined by your business and how it operates. Obviously, the best would have an end result of the customer walking in to your location to claim their reward. This gives you an opportunity to “WoW” them and offer that personal interaction that is so important to have between the customer and your staff. Personal interaction plays a big part in helping to build a quality relationship. Another great way is to provide a ‘code’ that could be redeemed on your website once the survey information has been submitted. This is a great way to drive traffic and give your customer another chance to browse your offerings.

The number of ideas that could be outlined here are only limited by your creativity. Likewise, the types of rewards offered for completing the survey are unlimited. They need to be quality, yet should not be too expensive. Remember, a very successful survey with a lot of responses could get very costly very fast. However, the information you will gain is invaluable!
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About The Author:

Sally Liddicoat is a Wife, Mother, Speaker and the Founder & CEO of AttaBoy! Solutions. Her goal is to help businesses increase sales, generate ongoing referrals, strengthen relationships and create loyal customers and employees through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.

Contact Sally

Do you know the difference? Many businesses cross the line between the two as if there wasn’t a line.

Here’s my story:
I was working in the corporate world, loved my job, loved my boss and co-workers. I really had no complaints at all. I was compensated well and was provided with a lot of opportunities for growth and advancement. At one point, I actually thought I might retire with 20 years of service. Then one day at one of our regularly scheduled mandatory meetings, I heard some comments amongst my coworkers that I hadn’t ever noticed before. Someone was being awarded “Employee of the Quarter” and I heard the side chatter, the whispering at the back of the room, the snickering and what was said struck a nerve. “I bet their gonna get IBM Merchandise.” Wow! How ungrateful, but then again… it made sense. Here was someone that had out-performed everyone else in the office, someone that had excelled in their job. IBM Merchandise – really???

Now don’t get me wrong, promotional products definitely play a role in business. They are great for trade shows and for giveaways aimed at ‘branding’ a company. And most employees enjoy receiving and displaying the little nick-knack garb and wearing the logo apparel -I know I did. In fact, everyone I worked with had that IBM Merchandise displayed prominently in our cubicles. We loved it even more when they passed out IBM T-shirts. Why wouldn’t we? It’s free stuff. But there is a difference between giving out promotional items and using them as a business gift to reward an employee for a job well done.

From that day forward, I felt a strong urge to educate companies on the importance of rewarding their employees in a way that is meaningful and also motivational.
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About The Author:

Sally Liddicoat is a Wife, Mother, Speaker and the Founder & CEO of AttaBoy! Solutions. Her goal is to help businesses increase sales, generate ongoing referrals, strengthen relationships and create loyal customers and employees through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.

Contact Sally

Your business needs a fish bowl!

One of two thoughts may have just crossed your mind; 1) We have a beautiful aquarium in our lobby, why in the world do we would we want a fish bowl? or 2) My business is online, what do I need with a fish bowl?

Once again, if you are in business your business needs a fish bowl! …and no I am not trying to sell fish bowls.

First off, for those with a retail location -although a fish bowl may hold fish that’s not the type we are suggesting here. You should have a fish bowl available to your visitors that says, *Drop your business card in and win a “deluxe widget”. The obvious reason that you want to be able to collect their information, you want to be able to send them information, you want to be able to educate them about the benefits of your products and services, you want to be able to ask them to come back in.

It’s really not that different if your business is online. A ‘fish bowl’ for an online business is an op-in form. Either way, you want to know more about your visitors. You want to be able to get people who don’t necessarily purchase to give you information about themselves.

Information is valuable and the best way to encourage your visitors to share theirs is to have a drawing for that “deluxe widget”. Note that it’s a “deluxe widget”. Don’t short change yourself here by choosing to give away something that has no value. Your visitors will see right through the hype. Make sure to choose wisely -the wrong choice will not produce the results you are wanting, either in the number of entries or in the value of coming back to your business.

Whether your plan is to give away 1 or 20 or make every one that enters a winner, after the drawing is over take some time and publicize the winner. Put their picture up, send a story to your local media and make the most of the event. Not only will the PR be good for your business, the winner will love the attention and be sure to tell their friends.
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About The Author:

Sally Liddicoat is a Wife, Mother, Speaker and the Founder & CEO of AttaBoy! Solutions. Her goal is to help businesses increase sales, generate ongoing referrals, strengthen relationships and create loyal customers and employees through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.

Contact Sally

Imagine… Your name was just called, you are the lucky winner of the raffle, you rush to the front of the room to claim your prize. It’s an envelope and you wonder what’s inside as you excitedly walk back to your seat. You can’t wait to open it to see what you won. Is it a gift certificate to a restaurant, a gift card to a local store??? Guess again – it’s a discount on products or services…

If you’re like most, your mood just went from happy and excited to disappointed. You went from winning a special prize to getting a discount. If you are lucky, it just might be for something you were planning to purchase anyway. However, that’s not usually the case – now, to claim your ‘prize’ you have to spend money you had no intention of spending to get your reward. Or… you do nothing and you won nothing – bummer. What a waste!

Now let’s look at this same scenario from another angle. You are representing your company or the one you work for. You are the person giving the door prize away – you need to market your business, right? Offering a discount or credit towards a purchase will bring in a sale. What’s the problem?

The problem is not in offering a discount or a credit towards a purchase, these are great ways to market your business. The problem lies is using a discount as a gift. Gifts are just that – gifts. They should not require the recipient to have to do anything in order to get their gift, especially not have to spend more money. They should not have strings attached.

Giveaways, raffles and door prizes are a marketing expense and need to be treated as such. When marketing your business the last thing you want is for a potential customer to go from being excited about receiving something from you to sheer disappointment. Obviously this is not good for business.

Invest the time, and the money, into selecting gifts that people will want to receive. Choose something that will have them go from excited about winning to ‘Wow! This is really cool!’ While it’s true that offering a ‘cool’ gift does not guarantee the recipient will ever do business with you, they will talk about what they received. They will tell their friends. They will remember. And that is good for business.
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About The Author:

Sally Liddicoat is a Wife, Mother, Speaker and the Founder & CEO of AttaBoy! Solutions. Her goal is to help businesses increase sales, generate ongoing referrals, strengthen relationships and create loyal customers and employees through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.

Contact Sally

The marketing department of your company has two responsibilities:

1. Bring in new customers
2. Keep your existing customers coming back.

Neither of those jobs is easy, especially if your marketing department consists only of you.
Everyone knows that the most common way to bring in new customers is to advertise. The problem with that is advertising can be very expensive and comes with no guarantees. The truth is, it is very difficult to measure the success of any advertising campaigns.

Now once you have a customer it is imperative that you keep them. The problem is most customers have no loyalty. They will go where the “sales” are or stop at the most convenient location. You try to provide the best possible service, quality products at competitive price, just like EVERY OTHER company out there. They just had no reason to come back to you.

So what do you do? How do you solve the problem without breaking the bank? Giving business gifts and giveaways is an excellent way not only to thank existing customers and to bring in new business but also to promote your products and services. Why? Everyone loves to get a gift. People will flock to a location that gives something away and they will remember where they received it from, they will even show it off to their friends and at the same time promote your business.

Receiving a gift makes people feel good about the company that gave it to them, especially if they see it as something of value or it has a usefulness to them. Thanking people with a gift for being your customer gives them a sense of loyalty to you and every time they use that gift it will help to solidify that relationship. Everyone also likes to be appreciated. When you promote your business using gifts you are getting a much better return for your advertising dollar. It won’t be a 30 second commercial or a discarded print ad, it will be the gift on their desk, in their kitchen or den that continuously reminds them of you. So when they need your type of product or service who do you think they will think of first?
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About The Author:

	Mike Liddicoat is a Husband, Father, Speaker and the Sales & Marketing Director of AttaBoy! Solutions. His goal is to help businesses maintain relationships, ensure future business and acquire new referrals through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.
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