When done right, marketing can bring so much enjoyment to your life.

For example, I recently married my beautiful wife Amy (pictures below :)). Leading up that wedding we obviously had a whack of bills to pay. Photographers, caterers, fees for the church, DJ, limo the list goes on and on.

Well when these bills hit all at once, it can be quite overwhelming.

Perhaps you’ve experienced a similar situation either for your own wedding, kids going off to college, Christmas bills or you’ve been hit with a big tax bill..

When this happens, your mind goes into overdrive thinking about all the possible ways you can generate some extra cash.

Personally, I find I’m most creative when I’m most desperate

The good news is, marketing can save the day. It did for me and here’s how…

My first and natural reaction was to have a “wedding sale”. It’s a great “reason why” and I knew I would be naturally excited about the promotion since the wedding was easily the biggest (and happiest) day of my life.

Lesson: Look for opportunities to tie in a promotion to something you are already excited about. You’re positive energy will naturally come through in your promotional materials and that will ultimately help sales.

So I put together a list of all my products that I was currently selling as well as some others that I wasn’t selling yet. Then, I made sure to price them so that when people saw the sale, it would grab their attention.

What are your thoughts? Do small discounts grab your attention?

For me, when I see a major price drop on something, I’m usually interested right away - especially if it’s a product I’ve been “eying” for some time. However, small discounts rarely grab my attention. I may say to myself “oh that’s cool” but it doesn’t get the adrenaline pumping. That’s why I wanted to make sure the deals available during this sale were worth talking about.

To take it up another notch, I combined several products into a “Bundled Package”. This is a fantastic opportunity for you to instantly create a deal. Amazon does it every time you order a book. You’re automatically offered another similar book that is bundled with the book you are wanting to buy and there’s a special savings if you buy the bundle.

What products could you currently bundle together right now?

We put together 3 different bundled packages and 34.73% of the people who ordered, took us up on at least one of the bundled packages.

That means the transaction size was a lot bigger and that meant we were able to generate a lot more revenue. Finding creative ways to increase the transaction size of every purchase is one of the fastest ways to generate more sales. That’s why upsells work so well.

Next, I made sure to have fun with the whole promotion. I included pictures from our engagement as well as a humourous video. Hey, if you can’t laugh at yourself then you don’t know what you’re missing… it’s a blast!

Weaving your personality into your marketing is critical to long-term success. People buy from people they know like and trust. If you don’t give your prospects or customers a chance to get to know you, then it will take a lot longer to build that trust.

Even when you look at Fortune 500 companies, they still have “personalities”. Just look at the difference between Apple and Microsoft. Both are VERY different in their approach to marketing and they appeal to two different types of people.

“Love me or hate me. There’s no money in the middle”
- Jim Edwards

Bringing your personality into the forefront gives you the chance to have some fun and just be yourself. There’s a lot less pressure and it’s much easier.

Here’s a recap of the 5 most important points to remember if you need to generate some cash flow…

1. Have a sale! People love good deals and it encourages them to buy NOW instead of later.
2. Stay open to using personal events in your life or business as a good reason for some kind of promotion.
3. Give people something worth talking about. If the savings aren’t eye opening, then why are you having a sale?
4. Look for opportunities to bundle your products - remember to price it accordingly (the bigger the bundle, the bigger the savings)
5. Have fun, be yourself and involve people as much as possible - the more involved they are, the more likely they’ll buy

Now the question is, did this sale pay for the entire wedding?

Hahahaha, I wish!

But it did pay for the lionshare of the bills which relieved a lot of stress and made the day that much more enjoyable.

Speaking of the wedding day, check out my beautiful bride

Amy came to the church with her girls in a limo but I knew that there was only one way I wanted to leave with my new bride…. and that was in my Mini Cooper with a “just married” sign on the back

When we first got the pictures back from the photographer we were really pleased because they did such a great job of capturing the day.

As we were going through them, I burst out laughing at the next picture because they knew that I love to joke around and took our “funny face” picture to a whole new level… you’ve got to love Photoshop!

I really wanted to send this to all of our friends and reletives as a joke to see what they would say

In the end, we used this picture for our thank you cards:

It was a beautiful day and I’m so excited for what lies ahead for Amy and I. She’s an AMAZING woman and I truly feel like the luckiest guy in the world. She has so much ambition and determination to do great things in this world and because of it, she’s made me better marketer, better business man and a better person.

Mark down December 19th and 20th on your calendar and you’ll get a glimpse of what I’m talking about. More to come

 

 

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About The Author
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Stu McLaren is a sought after marketing consultant for small business owners. He specializes in helping entrepreneurs leverage the internet in their marketing activities and is well known for his expertise in building and managing highly profitable affiliate programs.

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Other Websites of Interest:
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IdeaSeminar.com
MarketingWebGraphics.com
GetStartedWithInternetMarketing.com
GetStartedWithInfoMarketing.com
BasicListBuilding.com