Every business knows that repeat and referral customers are the best because they are the easiest to sell to and they outspend your other customers.

Hopefully you make special efforts to invite these customers to return time and again. Your efforts can be grouped into two groups - explicit and implicit - with both looking at the effort from the perspective of the customer.

The explicit effort is where you are making the effort to persuade the customer to do business with you; to purchase your products and services. Some of these efforts are just a business dropping their price.  Some businesses use loyalty programs which are another way of dropping prices. Dropping prices is definitely not the most desirable way of doing business. As my Dad used to say, 'You don't want to compete with someone that is going out of business'.

This is not speaking against loyalty programs or the occasional sale price, but is meant to simply point them out. The bottom line is that your effort is direct between you and the customer.

The alternative is the implicit effort. Think about a business that you think very highly of. Likely the reasoning is because of something the business does to speak about their commitment to their community and customers. You chose to do business with them because of what you think about the business; not necessarily what the business does directly for you.

Recently I read of a company that makes eyeglasses that has followed the example of Tom's shoes; sell a pair and give a pair to someone deserving. A product that says 'made in (your country)' generally causes someone to think favorably of the company in their country. Perhaps subtle and friendly are appropriate words to describe implicit efforts.

My question is to ask if you are making the decision of how you do it. You should.

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When someone says they want to beat their competition, I always ask how often you look to see what the competition is doing. My comment is, 'you can't beat them if you don't know what they are doing'.

If you want to know what is going on with holiday advertising, you will want to follow this link and sign up for their newsletters. This website posts all of the holiday print advertising by chain stores, box stores, and buying groups.

Black Friday/Gotta Deal