Ellis Communications, L.L.C.

Three Ways to Simplify and Improve Retailers’ Marketing:
Listen, Offer Complete Solutions, Stay Focused

            Listen to your customers.  Offer solutions, not just products.  Stay focused.  Nutritional retailers interested in using marketing to grow their business will have more success if they follow these three pieces of advice.

            "Sometimes it’s the simple things in marketing, such as talking less and listening more, that generate the results nutritional professionals desire as they strive to grow their business and help more people," says Martin R. Baird, president of Phoenix, Ariz.-based Nutritional Marketing.  "Marketing doesn’t have to be complicated to succeed."

            Baird offers the following seven tips that will simplify the marketing process.

Number 1 - Do less talking and listen more to your customers.  Retailers can learn from listening and the more they learn, the easier it is for them to solve their customers’ problems, Baird says.

Number 2 - Listening shows you care.  When customers notice that you are seriously listening to what they say, they know you really care about their concerns and needs, Baird says.  They appreciate that, he notes.

Number 3 - Great things happen when you listen.  "You will hear amazing opportunities to help your customers and to help their family and friends," Baird says.  "When a customer starts talking about their interests and hobbies, it should point to some great referrals."

Number 4 - Provide complete solutions.  "When you talk with customers, they want a solution rather than a product," Baird explains.  "Simply put, customers are paying you to find solutions to their problems."

Number 5 - Stay focused on your marketing.  Baird says he is amazed at how many retailers try a successful marketing technique and stop doing it because they get distracted.  Focus is critical to successful marketing, he notes.

Number 6 - To stay focused, work with a partner who also is trying to reach a goal.  "You partner doesn’t need to be pursuing a marketing goal.  But if you help your partner reach their goal, they will do the same for you."

Number 7 - Pay someone to help you stay focused.  "Pay one of your staff $20 a week to remind you of your focus," Baird suggests.  "If they forget, they pay you $10.  Believe me, with a  simple incentive like that, they will remember."

Nutritional Marketing provides a variety of services to nutritional retailers to help them improve their marketing methods and increase revenues, including seminars and conference speaking engagements on such topics as referrals, marketing, goal setting and customer service. 

Nutritionalmarketing.com is the premiere Internet-based source for free marketing advice, information and tools for self-driven, success-oriented nutritional retailers who are demanding information that helps them market their business, meet the needs of their customers and increase sales.  It offers such services as a free weekly electronic newsletter, free reports on how to conduct different kinds of marketing and evaluation of retailers’ marketing materials that is provided at no charge when the critique is posted online for all nutritional professionals to read.  Nutritionalmarketing.com also offers an electronic forum where retailers can learn from each other by discussing common problems, sharing ideas and gaining new insights from their peers. 

Nutritional Marketing may be reached at 480-991-6421.