No matter what your small business is all about, you simply have to offer a guarantee to your customers.  After all, why on earth should they buy from you if you don’t believe in your product enough to guarantee it?

However, the thought of actually having to give money back to customers is a scary one.  But something that you really have to accept in business.  After all, you can please some people some of the time…. as those famous lyrics go.

But what should you actually guarantee?  And how do you go about being fair to your customer, but also to put in place legitimate and fair damage limitation so that should something beyond your control go wrong that you don’t end up completely out of pocket?

That’s where the expression ‘keep it simple, stupid’ comes into play.

Let’s face it, we’ve all seen those reams of terms and conditions – small print that, to be honest, who on earth has the time, inclination or even the interest to plough through when you’re purchasing a product.  And we’re all guilty of it – only worrying about all those get-out clauses when something actually goes wrong.

The thing is, far too many businesses hide behind that small print.  And if there’s one thing that’s going to make your customers (or potential customers) think you’ve got something to hide, then it’s page after page of terms and conditions.

After all – how refreshing is it so see a company that says something along the lines of;

“We guarantee that our product is suitable to do XXX.  If it doesn’t, we’ll refund (100% / 80% or whatever) of the purchase price – no questions asked.”

It’s a bold statement – but it’s crystal clear!  And how many extra sales do you think a guarantee like that would bring you?  Because we’d bet our last dollar that it would certainly see them racking up!

In today’s world of mad litigation, multi-page contracts and people and businesses doing whatever they can to squirm out of anything they can, a guarantee like that will stand out like a shining beacon in the darkness.

Sure – it’ll take some courage to do it, but rather than thinking of it as a guarantee, think of it as yet another marketing strategy.  And anything that gets your customers sitting up and taking notice of you is exactly what you’re aiming for.

Be different, be professional, be bold.  It’s exactly these attributes that’ll have your business standing out from the crowd.

Do you offer a guarantee? Share it in the Comments section.

** This is just one of the many observations we made in an interview we did with John, the Founder of Wicked Campers. You can listen to the whole Wicked Campers marketing interview here. **

He’s one of Australia’s best small business marketers.

68 years old, covered in tatts, absolute salt of the earth fella.

He asked me if I wanted a quote to have my windows cleaned and gutters cleared.

Sure, I said.

So he pulls out his ladder, his 3 year old 64-page faint-ruled exercise book and a pencil from behind his ear.

10-minutes later he’s back with a written (bloody reasonable) quote on a bit of paper he’d ripped out of his 3 year old 64-page faint-ruled exercise book, apologizing that he’d run out of business cards.

He tells me he can do the work within the next two weeks and just needs a couple of days notice.

We have a chat, I get to know him and build trust then he excuses himself as he’s got more doors to knock on.

I love Fred. He keeps it simple.

I didn’t bother asking if he was on Twitter. Or had a website. He’s too busy ;0)

Postscript – It’s just over a week since I wrote this post and Fred just knocked on my door again. On a Sunday! I commented that he worked hard. His reply – “If you don’t change it, you don’t get it.” I love Fred’s attitude. (And know, he’s not pushy at all).

Following on from my recent trip to the theme parks on the Gold Coast, here are my 10 observations of how the they market themselves and questions  they pose about how you could be asking about your own business:

1. Product is King.   Q. How could you better treat your product or service?
2. Interesting pricing strategy of $99.99 until June 30, 2011 and you can use it as often as you like  (huge take-up….high perceived value…little repeat take-up)   Q. How could you alter your pricing to encourage more transactions but less take up?!
3. Q4U makes life easy by not having to cue for rides. They actually charge you for a problem they’ve created!!   Q. What can you do to make your customers’ experience hassle free…and charge for it at the same time?
4. They don’t use social media to have an ear to the ground.   Q. How can you ensure that you know what you’re customers are thinking?
5. They don’t always understand their customers’ state of mind – I would have kiled for a massage during the day as I raced between rides!   Q. What state-of-mind are your customers in when they’re ready to purchase from you? And how can you meet their needs?
6. Bring your staff along for the ride.   Q. What can you do to ensure that everyone who has responsibility for selling your product / service is on the same page?
7. Consistency is Queen.   Q. What could you do to ensure all your marketing is more consistent?
8. Consider bi-products – Massage, behind-the-scenes tours, product explanations.   Q. What bi-products are you inadvertently creating but not making money from?
9. Consider your opening hours a bit more closely (Wet ‘n Wild closed way too early given the huge cues).   Q. Are your opening hours respectful of your customers’ needs?
10. Don’t screw me – Pizza, photos were outrageously expensive … AND don’t charge for piddly little things eg. Remote control boats $2.  Q. What could you give away to your customers that would make them love you and not cause you to lose money?

Hear me go in to greater details about each of these marketing lessons here on the Small Business Big Marketing podcast #41.

To fill in the time I decided to send a tweet to Telstra to see if they were listening …

They were …

Now, I could be cynical and say that receiving this didn’t make my wait any shorter, so where’s the value.

However, I reckon there’s a lesson here for us small business owners … Social media is a great listening tool. Now, we might not be big enough to expect people to be tweeting about our business…but you should certainly be listening in on what people are saying about you category. For example, if you’re in the real estate business then you should have a few columns in say Hootsuite which track tweets about say property prices or the suburbs in which you sell.

What do you think? Are you using social media to listen in? How?

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As I see it, here’s the 5 atypical fund-raising tactics as of 2010:

1. Expensive direct mail…where a 2% redemption rate is cause for celebration.
2. Scatter gun advertising based on what the media offers FOC..and not on where the donors are.
3. Identifying that one special day…Movember. Jeans For Genes. Daffodil Day. All well thought out, but boy must they take some organising and resources!
4. Rattling tins on street corners and roads…dangerous and dated.
5. Gala balls. Raffles. Silent auctions.

Now, I’ve no doubt all of the above provide a ROI to some extent…but they all feel very 1950s (“Hello” to the Fonz!).

So, as one never to raise a problem without providing a solution, here’s 4 tactics I’d employ if I were the Marketing guy at a charity:

1. Place big red buttons all over town…alongside which was a coin slot, note drive and credit card swipe. Pushing the button once equaled a $5 donation.
2. Let’s take this one step further. Let’s create a vending machine that had 20 buttons. Each one representing a different cause. Same payment methods though. Then people could choose a cause that rang their bell.
3. Have a number you could send a SMS to that would result in $1 being added to your phone bill. The phone company would then pass it on to my charity. I’d have the number plastered over freely negotiated outdoor advertising everywhere.
4. Create an iPhone / iPad app that cost $1.19 to download…the entire amount (less Apple’s 30%) going in to my cause’s coffers.
5. In fact the above app could be the button mentioned in my first idea…and each time you opened it you were presented with ideas on how to donate…there’d be a red button locator…the number for sending an SMS…and maybe even an opportunity to buy a raffle ticket!

I know. I know. There are some technical issues to overcome with all the above. That’s OK…then we best get started.

Can you help bring one of these ideas to life? Or add another?

[fblike layout_style='button_count' show_faces='false' verb='like' font='arial' color_scheme='light']

As I see it, here’s the 5 atypical fund-raising tactics as of 2010:

1. Expensive direct mail…where a 2% redemption rate is cause for celebration.
2. Scatter gun advertising based on what the media offers FOC..and not on where the donors are.
3. Identifying that one special day…Movember. Jeans For Genes. Daffodil Day. All well thought out, but boy must they take some organising and resources!
4. Rattling tins on street corners and roads…dangerous and dated.
5. Gala balls. Raffles. Silent auctions.

Now, I’ve no doubt all of the above provide a ROI to some extent…but they all feel very 1950s (“Hello” to the Fonz!).

So, as one never to raise a problem without providing a solution, here’s 4 tactics I’d employ if I were the Marketing guy at a charity:

1. Place big red buttons all over town…alongside which was a coin slot, note drive and credit card swipe. Pushing the button once equaled a $5 donation.
2. Let’s take this one step further. Let’s create a vending machine that had 20 buttons. Each one representing a different cause. Same payment methods though. Then people could choose a cause that rang their bell.
3. Have a number you could send a SMS to that would result in $1 being added to your phone bill. The phone company would then pass it on to my charity. I’d have the number plastered over freely negotiated outdoor advertising everywhere.
4. Create an iPhone / iPad app that cost $1.19 to download…the entire amount (less Apple’s 30%) going in to my cause’s coffers.
5. In fact the above app could be the button mentioned in my first idea…and each time you opened it you were presented with ideas on how to donate…there’d be a red button locator…the number for sending an SMS…and maybe even an opportunity to buy a raffle ticket!

I know. I know. There are some technical issues to overcome with all the above. That’s OK…then we best get started.

Can you help bring one of these ideas to life? Or add another?

I couldn’t have written this book any earlier if I’d tried. Why? Because:

1. I didn’t start studying Marketing in any formal sense until I was 18.
2. I then didn’t get my first Marketing job until I was 21.
3. I then needed a good five years of making mistakes. By that time I was 26.
4. I then needed a good ten years of learning what worked and why? This took me through to 36.
5. I then had to start a number of my own small businesses and live the dream. You know how it is. At the age of 39 I figured I had enough runs on the board and a smidgen of free time to put fingers to the keyboard.

So, that brings us to Cha-Ching! The Sweet, Sweet Sound Of Small Business Marketing That Works.

It’s 250 pages chock-full of marketing ideas and inspirations for Small Business Owners.

And it’s launched on January 21, 2009.