In past blogs, we’ve made it no secret that we employ a fun bunch here at Synergy Marketing Consultants. We’ve long believed that possessing a highly energetic and jovial attitude helps to communicate excitement for your business. This is why if you’ve ever had a conversation with one of our fantastic sales reps, you’ll likely recall it as a memorable experience.

Now, among the zany characters that make up our office family is none other than our Vice President of Marketing, John Meloche. Known for having a good time, John is also someone who is notorious for having a good lunch! Or perhaps, a bad lunch depending on how you look at it.

Today, John decided to head out for lunch to McDonald’s – a fast food restaurant you may have heard of before. Proudly, John returned to the office with the standard French fries, soft drink and the not-so-standard McGangBang. Yes, you read that right. John had a McGangBang for lunch!

A lot less offensive than the name implies, EatMeDaily.com confirms the McGangBang as a McChicken Sandwich inside a Double Cheeseburger. John’s sandwich-within-a-sandwich, in fact, was taken even one step further. John placed a McChicken Sandwich in between his Double Quarter Pounder!

“Delicious!” was all a full-mouthed John could exclaim when asked about his slightly modified concoction. “That looks so good!” replied a co-worker. “That looks so disgusting!” responded another. The McGangBang, you see, is not officially on the McDonald’s menu. But, of course, it can be created by creatively combining the above mentioned menu items.

How “nutritious” is the McGangBang, you might wonder? NutritionData.Self.com lists the Double Quarter Pounder as containing 760 calories, 462 of which come from fat! It also contains 20 grams of saturated fat which is 100% of one’s daily value based on a 2,000 calorie diet!

The McChicken Sandwich, on the other hand, weighs in at a slimmer 430 calories, with 207 of them coming from fat! It contains 5 grams of saturated fat which is 23% of one’s daily value based on a 2,000 calorie diet. That would make the McGangBang a whopping 1190 calorie sandwich!

Needless to say, Synergy Marketing Consultants doesn’t recommend or endorse this meal. Then again, we don’t wish to dissuade you from having fun coming up with your own concoctions to tantalize your tastebuds! At the time of this writing, John could not be reached for comment about how much he enjoyed his meal. We do, however, wish him a speedy recovery!

At Synergy Marketing Consultants, we work within the ‘business to business’ working model. Our clients are business owners, and as such, we work diligently to help them find ways of increasing their own business. Of course, the better we are at our job in growing the client bases of our customers, the better business is for us.

As always, the Synergy Marketing Consultants blog works to assist business owners with tips and advice that can also help propel companies forward. Pushing your company forward doesn’t have to be complicated. So, as leaders in the industry of promotional gifts, Synegy has long championed cost-effective methods to promoting your business.

To do so, SmashBrand.com advises that you keep your marketing strategies simple and straightforward. To put it plainly, growing your business means growing your sales. So, at the end of the day, impressing your customers should be at the top of your priority list. Keep them at the forefront of your concerns so that each of your decisions will encourage them to keep coming back.

How can you meet their needs in ways that other companies do not? One simple method is the “surprise price reduction”. SmashBrand.com notes that when customers bring an item to the register to discover that it is being sold at a price that is lower than what is listed, they become “pleasantly surprised and genuinely happy”.

Perhaps, you can introduce an in-store promotion that communicates that on a daily basis, “surprise discounts” are available. If you legitimately offer such deals each and every day, this will be an exciting feature about your store that is sure to catch the attention of your customers. Not to mention, word will spread that your establishment is the place to shop if you are looking for a good deal.

We mentioned earlier that the concept of growing your business should centre around impressing your customers. Why not use your customers to further communicate that you are in business to please them? SmashBrand.com suggests that you “use your strongest customer relationships in new product development initiatives”.

Writes the site: “Asking your customers to become an active participant in evaluating your new product is a great way to propel your relationship forward…When you take the time to show your customer that your interest lies in getting them the best price and best option on new products, they’ll come to see your company as ahead of the game. It shows that you trust their input and value their expertise.”

Throughout this week, the Synergy Marketing Consultants Blog has been talking a lot about ways you can both stay ahead of your competition and give your customers the star treatment. The two essentially go hand in hand. If you can give your customers the type of experiences that will encourage them to keep coming back, you will guarantee yourself a loyal client base for years to come.

Of course, having that client base grow is always something that should be a concern to business owners everywhere. Earlier this week, OpenForum.com posted a blog with similar sentiments. There are numerous ways that you can have your customers fall in love with you. Many times, it’s the small things that they remember and cherish. And too many businesses are missing out on this.

Very simply, it is important to thank your customers. As we mentioned over the past couple of days, you wouldn’t have a business if you didn’t have your customers. There are many ways to thank them. And your simple gestures will help develop the type of “love relationship” that will have them supporting you for years, while getting others to do the same.

Giving your customers small gifts is one of the suggestions listed on OpenForum.com. Sometimes, going above and beyond the promotional gift, you may want to consider sending your favourite clients thoughtful gifts such as flowers on a birthday. Showing your gratitude will not be forgotten. It will help for you to be regarded warmly. And your business will reap the benefits of your customer’s continued loyalty.

If a customer has made a major purchase in your store, think of sending him or her a thank you card. Be sure to make it hand-written, advises OpenForum.com, as you will want to show that you are personally grateful for the support of your company. Expressing your appreciation to your highest spending customers is essential to getting repeat business in a big way.

Another way to woo your clients to have them choose their own rewards. Introduce a rewards program of some kind and allow your customers to select from a variety of either merchandise items or coupons. This is something you can offer to those who spend a certain amount within a month, suggests OpenForum.com. This encourages more spending which will help for a boost in sales.

It is likely that some or many of your customers are business owners themselves. Perhaps you can show your gratitude by referring others to the businesses owned by your favourite clients. “Pay it forward,” suggests the site. As long as they are not in direct competition with you, your referrals will surely be paid back.

In yesterday’s blog, we listed a few ways that business owners can make their customers feel like stars. After all, where would your business be without its customers? Your customers are people you should celebrate, and as such, you should treat them like celebrities. As we mentioned yesterday, Donna Cutting of BusinessKnowHow.com helps us with ways that this can be achieved.

Cater to your customers’ personal preferences, says Cutting. They may not be as picky and obnoxious as some celebrities, but catering to the needs of your customers is a key in getting return business. You can make your clients feel like stars simply by remembering their likes and dislikes.

It doesn’t hurt to surprise them in way that communicates that you have paid attention to them in the past. If you are a restaurant owner, you may want to take notice of a patron’s ordering patterns. The next time that person walks into your eatery, surprise them by asking if they want “the usual”.

One of our Synergy reps mentioned earlier this week that he absolutely loves going to his favourite sushi restaurant which is just down the street from where he lives. He visits so often that the employees know him by name. “The usual” is all he has to say when making an order. Clearly, he is a repeat customer and “star” at this restaurant and naturally, he recommends it to all of his friends.

Here is one of our favourite suggestions. Being a loyal reader of the Synergy Marketing Consultants Blog, you are well aware that we are proud of our long line of amazing promotional products. We are of the mind that giving your customers something for free helps for them to feel like stars.

Cutting concurs. “Give them SWAG!”, she writes, “At every awards show celebrities walk away with gift bags filled with products and paraphernalia worth thousands. There is a reason why people line up — and even pay good money — to give their goods away to celebrities via the swag bag.”

We are sure you know who to call when looking for “swag” to give to your customers. They will appreciate the sentiment and look forward to doing business with you again. Don’t forget, your promotional gifts will be constant reminders to your customers on where they should go when in need of the products and services you offer.

Finally, “be extraordinary”. Cutting suggests that to truly make your customers feel like the superstars that they are, you should be committed to being “remarkable” in every way possible. Think of the little ways that you can impress the people coming into your store. Offer them a feeling – not just an item – that they cannot get from anywhere else. Then it will be you who is the true celebrity!

If you didn’t have any customers, then you wouldn’t have a business to run. Simply put, your customers are the most important parts of your business. Who else are you in business for? And who else keeps your business going? It’s important to remember that in the grand scheme of things, your customers are your superstars. So we figure it’s time to treat them like that!

On BusinessKnowHow.com, Donna Cutting poses the question, “if Johnny Depp walked into your workplace today, how would you behave?” Movie stars, as we all know, are often greeted with a special type of treatment generally reserved for the world’s top celebrities. Wouldn’t we all love to be treated that way?

For some reason, we celebrate (the reason for the term “celebrity”) movie stars, singers and athletes more than we do people that mean the most in our everyday lives. Don’t your customers deserve to be celebrated? We sure think so. And Cutting would agree. She writes that there are six celebrity secrets for making your customers feel like stars.

What is one of the first images that come to mind when you think of actors arriving at an awards show? The red carpet! Cutting suggests that you give your customers a “red carpet arrival” when they come to your place of business. In other words, show them that you are glad they came. Smile, greet them and welcome them to your store. Sometimes, friendly eye contact is all you need to communicate that you are happy to see them.

Call them by name, insists Cutting. If your remember your customers’ names, it indicates that you have made them priorities to your business. We generally know every movie star’s name as if we have some sort of relationship with each of them. Well, your customers are your stars and deserve that recognition. Wouldn’t you agree?

Cutting goes so far as suggesting that you name some of your products after your favourite customers! It may sound like a crazy idea, but it has been done before. Some restaurants, she points out, name their favourite dishes after famous people. Perhaps, this is a tactic that would be beneficial to your business.

Secret three is to remember and refer your customers. It is one thing to remember names, it is another to remember different things about your customers. Get into conversations with those you notice in your store. Drumming up a discussion will help you to get to know them better.

Firstly, this will encourage them to want to come back as they know that they are welcome in your establishment. Secondly, your new friends will come back looking for you and likely recommend your business to others. You never know when you might just be making someone’s day by taking the time out to get to know that person.

We will continue to take a look at ways to give your customers the star treatment in tomorrow’s blog.

Well folks, the National Hockey League season has officially come to a close and the Stanley Cup playoffs are about to get underway. And no, this is not a blog about how heartbroken we are, here at Synergy, that our Toronto Maple Leafs are missing the playoffs for a record-breaking sixth consecutive season.

We didn’t particularly believe that they were getting in anyway. (It still hurts though…). Before we digress any further, we’d like to take this opportunity to encourage you to consider your spot in the playoffs…the business playoffs, if you will. Here’s how it works…

In hockey, as well as basketball which will also see the NBA playoffs kick off shortly, sixteen teams enter a tournament style competition to crown a champion. After playing a best of seven series, one team advances after eliminating the other. So in the business playoffs, the key is to think of ways to knock out your competition…one round at a time.

What will you do to get through round one? Perhaps, advertising in the community is the first step. Does your business offer the surrounding community a service that other businesses offer as well? What special mode of advertising can you employ to outshine your competitors? Consider flyering all neighboring houses for an upcoming sale.

This leads us to round two of the playoffs. Once you get your new customers into your store, what can you do to ensure that they keep coming back? Those special discounts may encourage additional sales. But it will be your impeccable customer service that will really impress your new “friends”. Create an environment that people enjoy being in and they will return for more than just what you are selling.

Hopefully, this will get you into the third round. Now the competition is getting fierce! You’ve driven customers into your store and have encouraged them to keep coming back. But now you’ll need to get them to recommend your store to others. Think of a special contest you can have in-store that asks customers to leave their names and e-mail addresses.

Now you’ll have a list of people you can contact regularly to both thank and invite back to your store to enjoy further discounts. But you will have also developed a way to have those customers tell their family and friends about your business. This will get you into the finals!

This is it. The championship can soon be yours! With all of these new customers, ensuring a sense of brand loyalty will be integral to knocking off your competition. Give your company some leverage by providing each one of your loyal customers with a useful and innovative promotional gift. They will appreciate the sentiment and reward you with years of patronage. Congratulations on your victory!

Throughout the week, the Synergy Marketing Consultants Blog has been pinpointing various ways that business owners can grow their customer bases through free means. As always, the promotional gift is at the top of our charts for cost-effective marketing sources. We encourage you to peruse our website to find the promo gift that best suits your business and its customers.

In yesterday’s blog, we reviewed a few tips on how your company can drum up more business. Taking a look an EzineArticles.com article from Charen Smith, our blog encouraged business owners to be creative in the way they introduce their companies to the buying public, always working towards growing their customer bases.

Revisiting points from Smith’s article, it is also advisable to communicate with your customers through picture postcards. This is something we have often recommended, especially around the holiday season, as we have some of the best Christmas card and CD packages in the business.

Smith writes that you should target your mailing list to people who you believe will respond, as this tactic may not necessarily be effective for everyone. Your postcard should request a “call to action” such as asking the recipient to respond as soon as possible in order to take advantage of certain sales and item discounts.

In addition, Smith says that sending out a booklet that highlights your products and their benefits is a great idea. Also targeting a specific audience, your mailer is a convenient way for customers to learn more about your company offers without having to thumb through an entire catalogue.

Remember that the objective is to get more customers coming into your stores. As well, you want those customers to give you repeat business. So just giving away something for free is only the beginning. You should be able to continually wow your customers each time they enter your store.

The Synergy Marketing Consultants Blog has had a history of providing tips and advice to business owners of all types. We hope that this week’s series of blogs has been especially helpful. We look forward to working with you in an effort to take your business to new heights in the coming year.

This week’s series of blogs has followed the theme of growing your business through the practice of giving your customers something for free. Continuing with that trend, today’s blog will focus on new and inventive ways to drum up business. Business owners are always thinking – or should always be thinking – about growing their customer bases. After all, your customers are the reason you are in business.

With the help of Charen Smith of EzineArticles.com, we thought we’d throw a few ideas your way to see if we can help give your business that boost it’s looking for. With that, a good old fashioned sale is Smith’s first suggestion on how you can get more customers coming into your store.

“People love a bargain,” writes Smith, “so be sure to have enough of a price discount or decrease to make it worth people’s while. People will oftentimes spend more money on multiple discount items than they would one or two regularly priced items. It’s psychological – they’re spending more money, but of course, they got an ‘extra’ item or two.”

Be sure to consider that when you are having your sale, you will want to give your new customers reasons why they should keep coming back. At the end of the day, you don’t want the customers to show up only because they can purchase something at a discounted price on that day alone. If that was the case, they may never return until your next sale!

Kill them with kindness – so to speak. Your personable customer service should give all of your store’s visitors a warm feeling and one of belonging as well. What can you do to make them not only return but recommend your store to their friends? The sale, of course, also provides a great opportunity to send your customers home with nifty promotional items. You’ll want to make sure that your new customers never forget you.

“Ask for testimonials,” suggests Smith, “Send a letter to loyal customers and ask them to provide a quote you can use in your marketing materials. You can send a letter or a postcard to ask for their quotes. By asking for testimonials, you’ll not only get great quotes, but people will be flattered you asked for their opinion and will be motivated to shop in your store if they haven’t for a while.”

Finally, don’t forget to keep the lines of communication open between you and your customers. “Communicate frequently,” says Smith. This is an especially good way to drum up business when it’s down. By letting your customers know that you haven’t forgotten about them and that you care about them even when they are not spending money in your store, you will increase their loyalty to your brand.

All week, the Synergy Marketing Consultants Blog has been discussing the “free way”. We are referring, of course, to the way business owners can drum up business and get repeat business by providing their customers with free gifts. As a leader in the promotional gifts business, Synergy has come to know that this cost-efficient practice provides long-lasting benefits.

As we have mentioned in previous blogs, building brand loyalty is one of the key benefits to giving things away for free. Making your customers feel good makes them feel good about you. Joe Fuller of EzineArticles.com agrees. He lists a number of suggestions on how entrepreneurs can use the “free way” to grow their businesses online.

Firstly, it is wise to include your company website on the promotional gifts you give out. An obvious way to increase traffic to your site, your gift is a constant reminder of how to find your company. Once the client becomes a visitor to your website, he or she should be regaled with other “free ways” that encourage them to keep coming back.

Daily blogs, clearly, are among our favourite ways to provide something a little extra to our clients. Fuller writes that giving your website’s visitors free access to your blogs helps to increase the site’s traffic. As Fuller writes, “In fact, it’s one of the best ways to get targeted traffic onto your list.”

Your list, of course, refers to the email addresses you encourage your website visitors to enter once they log on. Use this practice to also “give them an unannounced bonus related to that free gift, while providing free information through your autoresponder”, says Fuller.

Make your clients feel that they are part of a special and exclusive group, always privy to new information and among the first to be eligible for more free giveaways. Keep your client base excited about your company and continually interested in what you may have to offer them outside of your standard products and services.

Finally, find a way to encourage more sales of your products through your website. If a customer makes a purchase online, you may want to offer him or her a free product as bonus. As Fuller encourages, “Make them related to the main product so they help to use it better or extend its use in some way.”

In yesterday’s blog, we provided a personal example of how giving away something for free can give your company something for life! Our promotional gifts have been excellent loyalty-building tools for business owners all over the country. Why? Because when a customer receives something for free, he or she can’t help but feel valued by that business.

In addition, when someone pays nothing for something, that item is automatically worth the price! The point, of course, is to develop a relationship with your customers that your competition does not have. Yesterday, one of our great reps received a whole lot more than an oil change when he visited his local Midas.

Not only did he receive a free key tag that will allow for him to get a free oil change after his first five, but the customer service that came with the free item “wowed” him. We’ve discussed the concept of “wowing” customers in the past and figured we’d pass along a couple of other ways you may be able to do so in order to grow your client base.

“Treat your customers like friends,” suggested one of our staff members in a meeting earlier today, “If you don’t know the first name of a customer that you have seen in your store before, you better get it! My local bakery calls me by my first name every time I walk in there. It makes me feel like I belong there!”

That personal touch is another reason why our promotional items work so well. Remember that your promo gift will include your company’s name, logo and contact information. Imagine the advertising power of an item that is used daily and contains that information.

As always, you don’t just have to take our word for it. BusinessKnowledgeSource.com agrees that business owners can enjoy many returns from giving away products and services for free. They provide an answer to the question on the minds of many business owners. Why should you give something for free?

Says the site: “By giving something away for free, without strings attached, you build trust and develop relationships. Sure, there will be people who take advantage of the free things you offer, but there are also those who will feel the natural inclination to do something in return, like buy from you, recommend you to others, and more.”