FARUKI

Customers are tremendously important to all business owners. Without customers, there would be no income and, subsequently, no business. Individuals that buy things from a company are afterwards more likely to return there to buy again.

It is a smart business move to take the time to build long lasting relationships between yourself and your customer. Creating lifetime customers will net you more profit, than constantly seeking out new one-time customers.

In order to gain loyal customers, you need to offer a quality product. Customers that find your product to be better than they originally expected will come back looking for more of the same. If you offer a product that is inferior to that available from other sources, however, customers will not see any reason to offer you their business again.

After ensuring that your product is of the highest quality, work to put your company’s customer service on the same level. Respond quickly to customers, especially if they have contacted you with complaints. Customers don’t care how busy you may be or what other responsibilities you have; they want to receive a timely reply and expect your undivided attention.

In an effort to keep loyal customers aware of your products and services, maintain contact with them on a regular basis. Distributing a monthly newsletter is one way to inform clients of special limited time offers and new items you may be offering. In this way customers that have forgotten to purchase more things from your business because of their own busy schedules will also be reminded to do so.

A great way to motivate repeat purchases from old customers is holding “customer only” sales. Taking their previous purchases into consideration, you may be able to offer some kind of gift or special deal that coincides with their specific needs.

Consider one example. Suppose your company sells day planners and you will soon be releasing a new time management audio. Make a list of which customers have previously bought planners and provide them with a brief report regarding how important time management is that also mentions your new audio. You could boost sales by offering these previous customers a special “pre-launch” price.

Establishing long term customers is by no means a short or simple process. It can be done, however, by showing them deep respect and sincere appreciation. Investing time in doing so will eventually help you make strong relationships with lifetime customers.

When I first started split testing things on my landing pages to get more sales, I wasn’t sure where to begin. I often tested things that didn’t make much difference. Here are some ideas with an indication of how important it is to test each one.

1. Adding An Audio Greeting: Audio greetings are like video. They can help or hurt depending on the quality of the audio. Audio greetings aren’t as popular anymore, now that video has become so prevalent, but it’s still often a nice touch. Something to test is whether to have the audio start immediately, or wait until the user presses “play”. You can get some users angry if you start the message automatically, so you might use that approach only if it converts significantly better. If it only wins by a little bit, I’d advise you to wait for the visitor to start the audio. (important)

2. The Background Color: Some marketers swear that a deep blue background converts best. I’m not so sure. I’ve had light grey beat deep blue. But you can try all kinds of things. Leave it white? Black? Red? Use a watermark? In my split testing experience this factor doesn’t make as much difference as you might think, though, so don’t stress out too much about this one. (medium importance)

3. The Layout: Do you have one column or three? Do you have a long sales letter, or a short fact sheet. The general approach you take on your page can make a big difference. This might even be the most important choice to make. Unfortunately, when using multivariate testing software, it’s often difficult to test this factor with other factors, because it pervades so much of the page. You can either test this factor separately, or run your multivariate test from a spreadsheet. Or, with a server-side PHP-based software program, you can test it with other factors with some clever work, though it will probably be much easier just to run a simple split test for this factor alone. (important).

4. Your Offer: Do you give them 10% off, or a $100 rebate? Do you offer a free eBook as a bonus? Should you offer three bonuses, or just one? More is not always better. Should you do an upsell before purchase? Or should you do a “One Time Offer” after purchase? These things are extremely important. (important)

5. Risk Reversal or Guarantee: Should you offer a 100% money-back guarantee for 30 days? 60 days? 90 days? Lifetime? Many marketers will tell you the longer the better. Ironically, the longer your refund period, the fewer the refunds you’ll issue. Many times this isn’t in your control. Your payment processor will have a set policy. (60 days is very common). If you have more control, you can test all kinds of things. How about a “double your money back ” guarantee? That’s bold, but you’ll have to make sure you can make it work. (important)

6. Referring To Where They Came From: So the visitor clicks on a Google ad, and they come to your site, and it says: “Congratulations for clicking on my Google ad. You have just taken the first step toward . . .” This can have a powerful influence on the user, because it keeps them in their flow of consciousness that started at Google. You can try all kinds of things along this line. (important)

Those are just 6 ideas of many. Please test everything you can think of, but keep track of which things make the most difference for you.

Debt elimination involves three steps:

1. Stop acquiring new debt. 2. Establish an emergency fund. 3. Implement a debt snowball.

Here’s how to approach each step.

Stop acquiring new debt (This step can be accomplished in a minute.)

This may seem self-evident, but the reason your debt is out of control is that you keep adding to it. Stop using credit. Don’t finance anything. Cut up your credit cards.

That last part may be tough. Don’t make excuses. I don’t care that some personal finance sites say that you shouldn’t cut them up. Destroy them. Stop rationalizing that you need credit cards.

* You don’t need credit cards for a safety net. * You don’t need credit cards for convenience. * You don’t need credit cards for sky miles.

You really don’t need credit cards at all. Credit cards are like quick sand, the more your struggle, the deeper in debt you go. Later, when your debts are gone and your finances are under control, maybe then you can get a credit card. (I don’t carry a personal credit card. I don’t miss having one.)

After you destroy your cards, halt any recurring payments. If you have a gym membership, cancel it. If you automatically renew your World of Warcraft account, cancel it. Cancel anything that automatically charges your credit card. Stop using credit.

Once you’ve done this, call every credit card company that you just killed. Do not cancel your credit cards (except for those with a zero balance). Instead, ask for a better deal. Find an offer online and use it as a bargaining wedge. Your bank may not agree to match competing offers, but it probably will. It never hurts to ask.

Establish an emergency fund (This step will probably take several months.)

For most, this is counter-intuitive. Why save before paying off debt? Because if you don’t save first, you’re not going to be able to cope with unexpected expenses. Do not tell yourself that you can keep a credit card for emergencies. Destroy your credit cards; save cash for emergencies.

How much should you save? Ideally, you’d save $1,000 to start. (College students may be able to get by with $500.) This money is for emergencies only. It is not for beer. It is not for shoes. It is not for a Xbox 360. It is to be used when your car dies, or when you break your arm using RIPSTICK.

Keep this money liquid, but not immediately accessible. Don’t tie your emergency fund to a debit card. Don’t sabotage your efforts by making it easy to spend the money on crap. Consider opening a savings account at an online bank like ING or e-trade. When an emergency arises, you can easily transfer the money to your regular checking account. It’ll be there when you need it, but you won’t be able to spend it spontaneously.

Implement a debt snowball (This step may require several years.)

After you’ve finally stopped using credit, and after you’ve saved an emergency fund, then attack your existing debt. Attack it hard. Throw everything you can at it.

Most people say to pay your highest interest debts first. There’s no question that this makes the most sense mathematically. But if money were all about math, you wouldn’t have debt in the first place. Money is as much about emotion and psychology as it is about math.

There are at least two approaches to debt elimination. Psychologically, using a debt snowball offers big payoffs, payoffs that can spur you to further debt reduction. Here’s the short version:

1. Order your debts from lowest balance to highest balance. 2. Designate a certain amount of money to pay toward debts each month. 3. Pay the minimum payment on all debts except for the one with the lowest balance. 4. Throw every other nickel at the debt with the lowest balance. 5. When that debt is gone, do not alter the monthly amount used to pay debts, but throw all you can at the debt with the next-lowest balance.

I’m a huge fan of the debt snowball. It still takes time to pay off your debts, but you can see results almost immediately.

Supplementary solutions

You can do other things to improve your money situation while you’re working on these three steps.

First, focus on the fundamental personal finance equation: to pay off debt, or to save money, or to accumulate wealth, you must spend less than you earn.

Curb your spending. Re-learn frugal habits. (Frugality is something with which most college students are all too familiar.) You can find some great ideas on the internet. Also check Frugal for Life.

While you work on spending less, do what you can to increase your income. If possible, sell some of the crap you bought when you got into debt. Get an extra job. (But don’t neglect your studies for the sake of earning more. Your studies are most important.)

Finally, go to your local public library and borrow Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover. Don’t be put off by the title - this is a fantastic guide to getting out of debt and developing good money habits. I rave about it often, but that’s because it has done so much to help my own personal finances. After you’ve finished, return it and borrow another book about money.

The most important thing is to start now. Don’t start tomorrow. Don’t start next week. Start tackling your debt now. Your older self will thank you.

Trip travel insurance is a very worthwhile investment. An unexpected situation while traveling could leave you in a difficult financial condition. You may find yourself having to stay a few extra days in a hotel due to transportation problems such as an airling strike or vehicle problems. You or a family member could fall ill or suffer an injury that may require an expensive hospital stay.

Your current medical policy may cover medical emergencies while traveling out of the immediate area or you may be required to pay out of your own pocket and wait months to be reimbursed. Your travel agent my offer trip travel insurance to cover flight cancellations or natural disasters such as hurricanes.

Of course, it is also wise to closely investigate your preexisting insurance policies; some things that a trip travel insurance policy covers may already be covered by your own insurance. And of course, no one needs to buy overlapping coverage. If your own insurance already covers say, medical evacuations, you can safely shop for an annual or single trip travel insurance policy that does not include it.

Travel insurance is also available on an annual basis. This is great if you have to travel often. Check the premium costs for a single trip verses an annual policy that will cover any number of trips for the whole year. Again, read the exclusions, you may think you are getting a deal but you may not be getting great coverage.

Most trip travel policies, whether single or annual, will generally cover anything from an emergency airlift situation to lost luggage. These things do happen and you want to be sure you are covered.

There’s nothing worse than having one’s trip canceled due to unforeseeable circumstances and losing non-refundable fees that have already been paid.

Trip insurance will cover these losses, which certainly will help put your mind at ease when traveling or planning to.

A quick search online can uncover several agencies that offer trip travel insurance. Your current medical insurance may offer either a temporary or annual certificate to provide emergency medical help while out of the state or country.

Do you increasingly have trouble finding papers at work? Are your files or the files of your corporation a mess? Learning and applying document management techniques can help clear up the disorder of papers and documents that are misplaced or just not filed correctly. Document management does numerous things. in due course it controls how documents are created, published, reviewed and disposed of.

There are a number of business that can benefit from document management actions. Medical offices need to keep their records in order and in a safe way so that they act in accordance with HIPPA regulations. Some financial businesses need to prove that their reports haven’t been changed in anyway. Any department in a company that uses a lot of paper, such as the human resource unit or accounting department, are great departments to establish a document management system if there isn’t one previously in place.

Document Management can aid get a company structured so they will accumulate time and money during their days in the workplace. There are quite a few key things that a document management system should have in place in order to be successful. Knowing what type of documents that are created in the corporation is part of an effective document management system.

Also knowing if there is a guide for a particular document is a key thing. Another important factor is figuring out to store documents at any stage of their development and knowing what policies that affect to particular documents is extremely important in case there is ever an review or a particular document needs to be located

Do a little investigating before implementing a document management system. Here are a few items to remember in your preparation process. Identify what role the documents in your corporation plays. Figure out how your papers are used within your company. Pick a way to put in order your documents. How are your papers going to shift from person to person? Last but not least, make sure you have policies in place that envelope all the papers that your business uses.