Many small business owners, who are business owners at heart like myself, have not yet discovered the advantages of having a small batch of printed golf balls arranged for themselves. There is a common misconception that such logo items are suitable only for the advertising campaigns of large businesses with big budgets to spend. People in small business assume you have to have large advertising budgets to play with, huge networks of sales staff and plenty of regular customers that will be the happy recipients.

But this is not the case. Yes, if you are fortunate enough to be the owner of a business that ticks two, or even three, of the above boxes then logo gifts such as logo golf balls will be a great help to you. But if you are the hard working owner of a small business, even if you are a work from home business owner just adding to your main income, then the cost of promotional golf balls can be well worth their while.

How can this be the case? Well, if you are a small business owner who already has an interest in golf, then you become the distributor of your own printed items. Especially if, like me, you happen to also be not that good a player and count a good round as one where you don’t lose too many balls and probably find some more in the process!

If you are already buying golf balls anyway for your game, then buying promotional golf balls and using them yourself is a good marketing idea. For a start, you may be able to buy them on the business as they are a marketing expense, instead of them coming out of your own pocket. But it also means that when you are next playing a round with your friends and business contacts, you are showing them your printed golf balls.

This is where the common business misconception about them only being good for big businesses turns to your advantage. Your friends and business contacts playing with you see that you are using your own promotional golf balls and they will assume that you are doing fantastically in business. They see the logo golf balls and assume you are a great business success. This is brilliant for confidence and if you are impressing your business contacts, even better for your own business.

Then, at the end of the game of golf, give your playing companions a sleeve of your promotional golf balls for themselves to use in their future games. A little thank you for your business contacts for the game and their efforts in business, and a great advertising opportunity when they go out to play next time.

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As a business owner I have become much more alert when on the receiving end of business services as a customer myself and have started to notice much more how B2C companies treat their customers. One of the most prominent things I have noticed is how little skills staff have in communicating with customers and being able to foster a productive bond with them. Of the countless high street shops I browse in, whenever I ask a member of staff for help, it is usually greeted with a very short, matter of fact response and they spend no time engaging in extended communication with me.

It is often underestimated just how important it can be to be more engaging with your customers and take the time to develop a closer relationship with them. The closer the bond between your business and a customer, the greater degree of persuasion you may have over them, they are likely to feel satisfied and there is a greater chance that they will be a returning customer.

Therefore, as a business it would be useful for staff to perhaps achieve some basic tips for developing a more persuasive relationship with customers.

Likeness – one of the most influential persuaders is when you are able to let the customer know that you are both alike in some respects. People like people who are like us and if your staff can find an element of likeness with a customer it will enable them to build trust. This may sound a difficult thing to achieve in the short space of time you have with a customer. Your staff are not expected to start asking customers what their hobbies and interests are so they can then strike up a more in depth conversation about similar likenesses. What I am talking about is something more appropriate to the context. For example, a member of your staff may note a customer looking at a DVD they have picked off of the shelf and they approach them and say, ‘hello, have you been able to find what you are looking for? I see you are looking at The Shinning, I love Stanley Kubrick movies, is it for you or a gift because we have some of his other films’. Here you have spent a little bit of time engaging appropriately in context with the customer in order to develop a likeness. In this example, the DVD may have been for a gift and the customer might hate Stanley Kubrick, but you can’t win them all, it is just an illustration of how customers could be engaged in communication.

Scarcity – people in general and particularly customers are easily influenced when faced with scarcity. If they consider that there is a limited resource of something that they want and even more so when they believe that there is competition for it as well. It could be the last one of the Stanley Kubrick DVD’s in stock. Having spoken with the customer and developed a likeness, the member of staff could suggest to check in the stock room and then confirm that it is in fact the last one as they have sold three already today.

Authority & Credibility – talking from a position of authority or credibility has a great benefit and customers will respond well to this. Therefore, it is useful to ensure that your staff are well trained in product knowledge and/or are able to demonstrate the relevant qualifications, if this is applicable. Or, it could be deferring credibility to a third party, such as explaining to a customer that the camera they are looking at was voted best camera by the Which magazine.

Reciprocity – customers are more likely to feel a sense of debt and cause to make a purchase if you do something for them. Are you able to offer customers something for nothing, but that they see as having some value to it? It may be throwing in some accessories, offering gift wrapping, home delivery or seeing if you can source that much desrired item from another store that is in scarcity, and offering to reserve it so that it does not get snatched up by another customer.

Testimonies – in the last of our key aspects of persuasive communication, testimonies has to be one of the most compelling of all. As many of us tend to stick to what we know is safe, we take comfort in knowing that others have also approved and benefited from what we are also thinking of buying. Testimonies are a great way to do this. However, you need to remember that credibility is key here, because anyone can write a testimonial and you need to find a way of persuading the customer that the testimonies are genuine. The Ebay feedback system is a great concept because you know that these can not be faked. Another way is if you can get an authority to publish testimonials about you, such as a consumer magazine.

This article is written by J Keightley who is a professional life coaching specialist and ecommerce business owner of Giggleberries Mens Underwear, it explores the principals of building rapport with your customers.

An ‘ezine’ is an online magazine which sends out daily, weekly or monthly ‘editions’ to subscribers via email.

How to advertise with ‘ezines’:

The best way to advertise in an ‘ezine’ is to have a text ad and link to your website included within one of their ‘editions’. You can either pay for this link if you have a website without an affiliate program or you can suggest to the ezine owner that he/she uses an affiliate link to direct subscribers to your website for a share of the profits. This can sometimes be the better option as you don’t pay anything, however, if your website is a proven seller and is to be advertised to a large targeted subscriber base of say 100,000 people, it may be worth it to pay upfront.

What you must watch out for:

Now here’s the thing… Ezine owners, just like any website owner, are on a mission to generate revenue. As a result, it will obviously be beneficial for them to exaggerate the size and quality of their subscriber base so that they can charge more for ad placements!

You MUST make an effort to find out how large and how targeted their list actually is. The way to do this is to look at previous editions of the Ezine, pick out the advertisers, click on the links to visit their websites and then email the webmaster to find out how successful his ad campaign with the Ezine was.

Email at least five webmasters who’ve advertised with each ezine and you should be able to evaluate if your investment is going to be worthwhile or not.

You can find a large selection of Ezines by category at www.ezinesearch.com

3 steps to multiply you database with Ezine advertising campaigns:

When you find an ‘ezine’ owner has both a large list of subscribers and who is willing to market your product or service for you, set up this simple 3 point system to effectively capture a large chunk of their subscribers…

1. Agree the terms and price of the campaign. Give the ezine owner a link to send their subscribers to.

2. This link will direct the traffic to a blank page on your site with a brief but highly effective description of your product. Use fear, urgency and positivity in the description.

3. Under this description, include a box where the visitor must enter his name, email address and then press ‘submit’ in order to gain access to the sales page for your product. As I’ve already said, you can get one of these lead capture boxes at GetResponse.com.

When your ad gets emailed out, this is what will happen…If the ezine in question had 100,000 subscribers for instance, around 20,000 of them will probably get to your product description page. If just half of those 20,000 people submit their details to view your product, you will gain 10,000 targeted subscribers in an instant – and obviously make some sales as well!

Simple but highly effective and you can still do this even if you are an affiliate promoting someone else’s product!

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