National Small Business Week kicked off Monday, May 12, and runs through May 16. The event, sponsored by SBA.gov is aimed at celebrating small businesses across the country.

For a list of webinars and online events aimed at helping your small business succeed, visit SBA.gov.

Tips from these online events and webinars include:

Growing your business with direct mail. Although direct mail campaigns are controversial, they are still effective so long as you develop the right strategy. For this, you must determine your goals, budgets, and frequency for your campaign. Another tip for developing a direct mail campaign is to create a “call to action”. Direct mail is not effective if you don’t give people directions for what to do next. Also, in order to hit your target market with your direct mail campaign, try refining your list. This includes determining the geography, income level, and gender of potential customers. It’s also important that you follow a formula while writing. One of the most well-known ones is the template of AIDA (attention, interest, desire and action). To finish up your campaign, send out a sample test to fewer people in order to gauge results.

Achieving big customer loyalty. There are many different factors to be considered when it comes to customer loyalty, one of which is ensuring you have the right customer base. Frame your business to target those who will give respect and make sure to engage with customers, even when online. Customer loyalty is not completely dependent on the owner though. If your employees aren’t sure how to build customer loyalty, you may want to consider offering them a customer service refresher course. Customer loyalty may be confusing from the business’s perspective, so view it from the customer’s perspective. Assess if there are any limitations or inconveniencies to the way you work. The only way you’re ever going to maintain customer loyalty is to take complaints and suggestions seriously and proactively. Whether it be by email or social media, attempt to write your wrongs and adhere to the customer.

 For more, visit SBA.gov.

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