Today in Birmingham with the Pop-Up Business School participants we came up with the following list of low cost or no cost ways you can promote or market your new business!

Big thank you to the Poplar HARCA Pop-up business school participants and Tony Pass of the Retail Operation for helping us to come up with this list!  Loving working with you.  For more tips on Retail then visit Tony's Blog at The Retail Operation

Today I noticed Model Zone in Basingstoke was having a sale, being the geek I am I called in and found out that they had gone into Administration and were selling everything off!

Is this another nail in the high street's coffin?  The high street is already littered with empty shops, however it always seems busy.  There are always people their.  So why are businesses failing and shops being left open if the people are still walking past the doors?

There are so many questions surrounding the future of the high street and whether or not it will survive.  I thought I would ask you want you think about the future of the high street and give you some thoughts about setting up a shop

With so much change on the high street and so many shops laying empty, now might just be the time for you to take the retail world by storm!  Come up with your idea and there are opportunities abound to get retail space for free.

• What expectations do your customers have of your business?
• What expectations have you set?
• Do you do more to win a customer than to keep a customer?

A recent visit to giraffe Basingstoke has inspired this visit.  As you may or may not know our co-founder Alan Donegan loves pancakes, maple syrup and breakfast in general.

We went to the Giraffe in Basingstoke and received these incredible pancakes, they were a huge stack of fluffy perfectly cooked pancakes with a drizzle of sauce over the top.  The chef obviously took pride in cooking them.  I was blown away and loved them.  Expectations set at a very high level

I went back the next week to have more of the fabulous pancakes.  I ordered them after my breakfast burrito with anticipation and excited only to be dissapointed with three sorry looking, little floppy pancakes.  I felt let down.

I told the waitress who assured me that they were always that size.  I told her about the ones I had the time before and she didn't believe me.  Lucky I had taken the picture above to prove my point.  The manager ended up coming over and again told me that they were always the small size.  They didn't believe me.  I showed him the picture and he ended up taking my iPhone into the kitchen to discuss it with the chef. But the damage was already done.  I felt like they didn't trust me when I told them something

The manager made it up to me by saying that he would not charge me for the pancakes.

Being a pancake lover I went back again and saw the manager before ordering and he said it would be like the first time again.  So I ordered, they weren't bad but not as good as the first time.

This morning I went again and expressed my desire to have the bigger pancakes to the waitress who again told me they were all one size and proceeded to bring out tiny pancakes.  Smaller than ever.  I was truly dissapointed and couldn't be bothered to talk to the manager again.  It was obvious they didn't care about me as a customer or my desire to have a decent stack of pancakes in the morning.

Why am I telling you this story?

If I had only ever received the smaller pancakes I would never have felt this way about Giraffe as a restaurant. But they set my expectations very high with the first pancakes I received and then they have failed to deliver the same again.

What expectations are you setting right at the start of your interactions with your customers? If you don't know; ask them!

Are you living up to this expectation time and time again every time they come?

It takes a lot of effort to win a customer, so you must do everything to keep the ones you do win!

Love to hear your comments.  Please write below.

The key to marketing is consistency, chose how you are going to market your business and then do some every single day. Build momentum and amazing things will happen if you stick with it!

Over the next few months we have some fabulous events coming up.  We will let you know more about these as they get closer.  Put them in your diary though and come along for advice on how to start businesses, make money and having fun!

After an interesting experience in Sainsbury's last night I wanted to share with you these top tips on how you can get your customer to take action today and buy your products. 

We would love to know what you think so add comments below and please share and re-tweet if you think it is valuable

The full text from the video:

1. Do promotions change the way you shop?
2. Have you ever walked into a supermarket and bought something you weren’t expecting to buy?
3. Have you been manipulated?

Well I thought I would share with you some things we can learn from some of Britain’s biggest institutions the supermarkets and how they do business.

Last night I went to Sainsbury’s for a coffee with a friend in the Starbucks.  I planned to buy nothing.   I had the coffee and as I was leaving there was a big display stand in front of me with the new James Bond Blu-ray and DVDs on sale.

They were on offer.  Spend £30 in store today and you can get the Blu-ray for £12 only.  That seemed pretty good.  I paced around the display stand wondering if I should do it.

You probably know that I am a James Bond fan and I loved the most recent Daniel Craig movie so I did it. This simple promotion of: if you spend £30 in store today you can get £6.99 off got me.

I spend the next 30 minutes buying stuff around the store that I am not sure I needed to by.  I picked up three packs of cereal (we will always use that) then some kitchen towel and toothpaste.  6 Packs of Toothpaste!

Then two large packs of nuts.  Some aftershave balm (got to look after my complexion and then finally this is the last straw I bought hand cream.  I thought I don’t want to have dry skin I will by hand cream.

I wasn’t going to buy anything and now I am wondering round the shop buying hand cream trying to tot up the figures in my head to see if I have spent £30 or not! I don’t want to go to the till and have nearly spent £30 so I over spend and when I get to the till and go through the self-checkout do you know what my total bill was?

£52!

I wasn’t going to buy anything.  Nothing at all.

My behaviour completely changed and all because an offer.

So what can we learn from Sainsbury’s?  For me it comes down to two things.

1.       Give people a reason to buy NOW.  Sainsbury’s brilliant said if I do this now then I can get something I want cheaper.  I was sucked in and I bought now.

2.       Up sell.  Sainsbury’s not only gave me a reason to buy NOW, they also asked me to purchase more for me to get what I wanted cheaper! And I like the lemming that I am followed instructions and spend £40 more!

So the questions you need to ask yourself if you want to increase your sales are:

1.       What reason is there for my customer to buy today?

2.       Why should they spend more money with me today?

To give you an example, say you ran a Yoga class weekly.  If you had a new person turn up for your course why should they sign up today to come back again next week and not only why should they sign up now, why should they sign up now for the twelve week package?

If you want to increase your sales you need to give your customers reasons to buy and reasons to buy NOW!

Love to hear about your experience of how offers have changed your buying patterns and your experiences of using them for your business.

Make some comments below and please share this if you think it is useful.