Even as we are nearing the

Even as we are nearing the end of one season and heading into a new year, from the great time to reflect on what has worked in your business biweekly loan calculators and what needs improvement. One area that frequently gets flushed up for what we believe to be "more important" things is marketing. Might know about as Home Stagers need to seem to comprehend is that we are not in the business of Setting up Homes. We are actually in the business of promoting our Home Staging business. As one of my mentors always says, "the marketing is more important than the mastery". Think about this for a second. We could become the best Stager around. We know precisely how to plan out the optimum floor arrange, choose the best colors, turn crack properties into model homes, but if all of us don't market ourselves and get the business, we will never get to optimize that floor plan, choose those colors or create those beautiful spaces and get paid for it.

I recently had a discussion with a Staging Designer who said that she had not had to market her business the last few years, and in all fairness, she didn't need to - or did she? Real estate market was very strong until recent months and business just came to her. But as we got further straight into our conversation, she also mentioned that will she was upset with little that she hadn't increased the girl prices like she should have yet again the market has turned, it is going to possibly be difficult to raise her rates and she's tired of working with all the "cheap" clients. So I posed a question to her. Despite the fact that she was getting organization without much effort, what if she had actually marketed her services to realtors? Could she have been better, high paying clients which would have allowed her to eliminate the penny pinching cheapskates that were trying to keep her busy, but broke? Option million dollar question.

If that resonates with you, now is as good a time every to reevaluate what you've recently been doing, how you've been undergoing it and improve upon it. First, together with foremost, make marketing your Hosting business a top priority. Just because the marketplace is slow, does not mean there is no enterprise. There's business and if you're not getting hired, someone else is. You have to be in front of the prospects ALL THE TIME so that when they will need your services, you're the first man or woman they think of. So let's go back to the dilemma of the soft marketplace and how to raise your rates. Do you think there were a lot of Real Estate Agents who jumped on the real estate bandwagon when the market was hot? How about mortgage brokers? Do you consider all of them are still in the game? Well, We would venture to say that the same relates to Home Stagers. There are plenty of Stagers who also jumped on the bandwagon who are falling by the wayside every day. What does that mean on your behalf? Less competition, right? Since organization is all about supply and demand, if there is less supply out there, meaning fewer available services, then guess what, your value automatically increases. Capitalize on that. Obviously, having great experienced services is a given, but value elasticity may be a moot point right here. If you're the "only game throughout town" or the "best game inside town", you will survive and likely flourish in this economy. Raising your prices will not likely necessarily affect you negatively.

Within my ongoing effort to help Home Stagers "stand out from the crowd", I've layed out five marketing strategies that can help you induce new business, increase business from present customers and build repeat business. You do not have to use all of them, but you can certainly use some of them.

We've all had experiences with the little punch cards or the stamp cards whereby you earn a totally free product after purchasing a certain wide variety of products. I've carried frequent buyer cards like these in my wallet for car washes, cheese steak sandwiches and bubble tea. As a Stager, you can offer this with your Staging Consultations. Perhaps your Realtor clients can buy 5 to get one free of charge or if they Stage 3 components with you, they receive one totally free consultation.

The idea of the frequent buyer type incentive is to encourage the consumer to return to your business rather than spreading the business around. To make this type of motivation even more effective you can tie it to an expiration date so that the things have to be accumulated and redeemed within the certain time period. With the Stage 3 properties and receive a free consultation deal, I would definitely limit that will to 3 properties within a quarter or perhaps something to that effect, not several properties over an open ended time frame.

This is the most commonly used marketing strategy in business. Almost every business in America uses discounts in various times in various ways. Try to be careful not to overdo it. There were a furniture store nearby that had a "going out of business" purchase for 4 years running. The continuing sale lost its appeal eventually, especially when you knew the same sale made would be available next week, next month as well as in that case, even the following season.

It's important to have a logical reason for the particular discount opportunity. Some common ones usually are inventory overstock, an anniversary, a holiday, an introductory offer for new customers, in addition to a special offer on a new product or support. One strategy that would work well for Stagers, particularly at the end of the year when organization slows down is to have an inventory overstock sale. Advertise that your warehouse will be overstuffed so in an effort to manage the surplus of available rental inventory, you're working with a sale. All Staging projects ordered in the month of December will get 25% or even 50% off the standard rental fee.

I've seen this specific a lot with museums and theme parks. You pay for a season go that entitles you to use the amenities 'X' number of times or pertaining to 'X' length of time rather than paying as you go per visit.

The same idea may be applicable to your staging business. Let's take a take your Staging Consultations for example. You may sell a membership card great for say 10 consultations in a 1 / 4 (that's only 3 a month). If purchased onezy, twozy, the average consultation might be $300, costing the consumer about $3000. 00. Now by purchasing the card in advance the customer can save $600. 00 or 20% off the regular price (essentially getting 2 totally free consultations). If you sold just one membership rights a month, you immediately collect $2400. 00 and consultations have almost no overhead attached to them. Your simply expense is time. Sell 2 or 3 memberships a month and you've elevated your cash flow significantly. You can even tier those programs to work with clients in various levels of volume.

If you're not necessarily already accepting credit cards, I would inspire you to open a merchant account quickly. Every business should accept Australian visa and MasterCard at the very least. Adding U. s. Express and Discover would be a bonus. The easier you make it for the customer to purchase and the more payment options a person offer the customer, the better. This also can help you get paid quicker and you don't have to take care of billing customers for recurring obligations for extensions on rental listing. You just automatically charge their debit card when it's time. Keep in mind that when property owners are selling their properties, their income may be limited due to multiple deals occurring simultaneously. They could be in the process of getting another property while selling the current home which means there are various expenses fighting for the same wallet, so getting the option to pay by credit card will be the determining factor for choosing one Stager over another. It's not always around the price. It may be about convenience.

This is the single most effective marketing strategy that virtually any business can use to build customer loyalty, to retain customers and to stimulate a lot more frequent purchasing by customers. Normal mail efforts can be in different forms like fliers, postcards, letters or a once a month newsletter.

A regularly published newsletter is definitely a powerful, cost-effective marketing method. When you connect with your clients with your own newsletter a person create top of mind mind with your customers. They will automatically think of you when it comes time to buy your product. A new newsletter is especially valuable when you can pass on useful information and ideas your customers appreciate and you can continue to illustrate your expertise in your field. This particular ultimately results in word-of-mouth advertising. A second perk is that you can advertise revenue, special offers, new products, new services, new locations and so on in your own publication.

As the Staging Designer, you could put out the newsletter on home design, home care, and other real estate related topics. You have the option of a hard copy newsletter or an electronic newsletters, otherwise known as an ezine.

Now that you know typically the five strategies that can help you stimulate new business, increase business from existing customers and build repeat business, think about how to effectively incorporate and utilize them in your own business. Let your creative energy flow and have fun with it. Happy Advertising in 2009!