January 2008 Business Newsletter

Happy New Year!

2008 is just getting started and it's a perfect time to consider what we are all going to do to grow our businesses this year. That's the theme of this month's newsletter - making it great in 2008.

There have been a few changes to the site - upgraded listings, public newsletter, podcasting infrastructure, viral marketing pieces, and more - all designed to bring more people into the site to discover our great practitioners (more on this in the main content).

In this Issue:

• Increasing Your Revenue in 2008
• What's New on NHC
• Year end report

If you are in the Greater Toronto Area, we'd like to invite you out to the Quarterly Business Networking Event on January 29th. The last one was well-received, connecting a wide mix of practitioners and business owners with each other during open and structured networking.

Warmest wishes for a happy and prosperous 2008,
Gisela
gisela (atsign) naturalhealthcare.ca
416.596.9533 x 290

Increasing Your Revenue in 2008

The start of the year is time for planning your business goals, and for most businesses, that means contemplating growth. There are three ways you can bring more dollars into your business:

1. Bring in more customers
2. Bring your customers into your business more often
3. Have your customers buy more during each visit

Bring in More Customers

Statistics show that even top-performing businesses lose 20% of their clientele to attrition. People die and move away, or they simply change their habits and needs. Replacing those people is necessary to keep your business on an even keel, never mind growing.

No matter how happy your customer base is, you are going to need to reach out to new people. The best way to convert strangers to clients is through word of mouth - the infamous viral marketing. Do you give your clients discount cards to share with their friends and family? Do your clients know about your gift certificates? What else can you do that would prompt your existing clients to tell the people in their circle of influence how wonderful you are?

Reaching out to a wider audience is not just about advertising. Who else do you know who markets to your desired customer? Surely you network with business owners in compatible fields. Have you considered cross-promoting with their database? Offer their best customers a special discount for trying your services, and vice versa. Remember - you want to make it special enough that it is only offered to the top tier clients, and let them know that this is a special gift and that they are being singled out because you appreciate their business.

And then, of course, there are the traditional advertising venues. Here's where you have to ask yourself honestly if you have budgeted for it, and are you truly charging enough? Next month's article will discuss setting prices.

Bring Your Customers in More Often

What special celebration or offer can you create to bring your best customers into your business? Is there something you can offer for free to the cream of the list to get them to come by? Your best customers will appreciate being thanked, and usually, they will not leave empty-handed.

Trust that your best customers are not going to take advantage of you.

How much does each of your top ten customers spend with your business every year? Do you know who they are? Are you sure? You should be. If you don't, make that your Business New Year's Resolution. (And if you don't have a customer database, make that your second resolution, even if it is an excel spreadsheet or a notebook where you track customer visits and how much they spend.)

Have Your Customers Buy More During Each Visit

In the past few years, there has been a lot of talk about residual income and multiple streams of revenue. The idea is to bring in additional revenue without making additional work for yourself.

What complementary products or services could you offer to your clients? We're speaking about items that don't require a giant investment of time and money up front, plus they are items that your customers are going to buy anyway - so why shouldn't they buy them from you?

Find a few items that work with the amount of space you have available and your clientele and then simply ask your customers what seems like a good plan to them. Have casual conversations with your best customers. Tell them that you are considering adding a few items and that you would value their input. People love to be asked for their opinions - especially when it is not a sales pitch, so be sure to talk it up before they're in your hands.

There is an additional benefit to bringing in complementary products and services: new people looking specifically for those items can be converted to clients for your core products and services!

So, what are you going do this year?
We'd love to hear your ideas, so feel free to send us you suggestions! Let us know if we can share them in the next issue.

(P.S. If you would like some suggestions, feel free to email me - we're working on a special section of the site for you to find these products to coincide with the focus of the second networking event of the year, but it isn't ready to go live yet.)

What's New on NHC

I was recently asked why we charge so much for a simple website link. The short answer is: we don't.

We actively bring people to the site to find our members, marketing online and off.

In addition to being highly-placed for hundreds of highly desirable keywords and phrases, plus thousands of others bringing traffic to the site with a high sticky factor (the number of pages/visit and return rate), we promote the site in other venues. We create viral marketing support for the site, such as the "tell a friend" functionality on every page, the workplace wellness cartoons, and more.

In 2007 we did the following:

• Triple booth at the Whole Life Expo, showcasing the products and services of our members and strategic partners;
• Radio - quarterly shows on From A Woman's Perspective on AM740, featuring our practitioners (we also break the show into segments and post them on NaturalHealthcare.ca - you can visit it from most pages on the site http://www.naturalhealthcare.ca/audio/);

• SNAP Downtown Toronto - monthly 2-page spread including calendar of health-related events, and workshops posted by our members;
• Quarterly networking events connecting business owners with each other for business-building opportunities; and
• Advertising in CheckUP Magazine

Most of these projects involve opportunities for our members to also advertise at a discount For instance, the SNAP Downtown Toronto ad space, where a 1/16 page is available for $120 through us, vs $150 regularly, plus you are in context with the health section. Relevant workshops and events are automatically posted to the calendar (for free) when you add them to the site.

Here's what we're doing in 2008:

• Public Newsletter - January saw the first public NHC newsletter featuring the following articles:
  • Our Fascination with the Fountain of Youth by Diane McLaren of Healthy Naturally You;
  • Nutritional Tips from Stephanie Brander of Stephanie's Natural Solutions; and
  • The Importance of Balance by Dr. Barbara Smith (this article was also published in our section of this month's SNAP Downtown Toronto).
  It also included some general information about the site and reminders about new features.
  Remember, we always need articles, so if you have something to submit, feel free to send it to us!
• Print - Canada-wide event listings starting in the January/February issue of Organic Lifestyles magazine sponsored by NHC (and your related events can be included at no charge)
• Game - Our newest viral marketing piece is an interactive Flash quiz that challenges visitors to answer 10 questions on natural health care topics, from fitness to natural fibers to herbs. You can try it out yourself at: http://naturalhealthcare.ca/game/
• Freebie Zone - Starting in February, look for the new Freebie Zone on NHC. It's a way to bring samples of products to the visitors to the site, and a way to bring more visitors by word of mouth.
• Podcasting! - We're starting off slow with bi-weekly interviews with practitioners and experts, but the goal is to build to an hour-long format. We need participants! If you would like to do a 10 minute segment on a specific area of expertise, let us know at ListAdmin (atsign) naturalhealthcare.ca

We're increasing the viral factor, we're increasing the sticky factor, AND we're increasing opportunities for you to demonstrate your expertise.

Year end report

We were hoping to have finished the yearly wrap-up report for 2007 in time for this, but the increase in visitors and search phrases over 2006 is a bit overwhelming. In 2006, there were 21,904 unique search terms and phrases to wade through, and in 2007 there were 35,691 (and that's despite the system having mysteriously eaten January and February's logs, so they have to be dropped in from back ups).

Anyway, with all the additions to the site, we're a bit behind, but we should have the analysis doc on the site in another week or two. It will replace the 2006 document here: http://naturalhealthcare.ca/statistics_and_analysis.phtml

What else?

In other notes, we'd like to remind you to post events and workshops to the calendar (it's free)! If you are looking for a practitioner or have space to rent, or even have used equipment to sell, be sure to get them posted to the business to business classified ads (also free).

The workplace wellness wing (Wellergize™) is Canada-wide, and the database of on-site practitioners goes live at the end of February. If you do on-site work and have a paid listing in the main database, it's no additional charge. (Have you searched Google lately for "workplace wellness programs"? I'm sure we'll stop crowing about that later.)

Once again, the quarterly GTA networking event at the end of the month (January 29, 2008). We've got a great speaker, Michael Ballard, President of Resiliency for Life, on the subject of Caring for the Caregiver: making time for yourself. Limited space, tickets $25, available online at http://users.naturalhealthcare.ca/member_notes/party.phtml

So, calendar, classifieds, networking event - yes, I think that's all for the moment.

Please remember, if you find the articles of interest, feel free to pass them along to friends and colleagues. If it is more appropriate, send them the link for the public newsletter instead.

All the best, and a happy and prosperous 2008!

mail: ListAdmin (atsign) naturalhealthcare.ca