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| Promoter vs. Marketer |
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Here is a quick quiz: 1) Do your marketing campaigns typically have one step? 2) Do you frequently move from one marketing tactic to another? 3) Do you frequently wonder why that email, postcard, or fax blast didn’t produce any results? If so, you might be a promoter. There is a big difference between the two. Here’s why… Your prospects are bombarded daily with marketing and advertising messages. Me too promotional sales and one shot pony campaigns don’t work, and they don’t generate results. Educating your prospects, taking the long term view of cultivating a relationship and truly differentiating yourself is critical. Especially with social network and the ADD induced state most of your prospects find themselves in… They can’t pay attention to the road while texting, let alone long enough to pay attention to your one time promotion… It isn’t quite as easy building a true marketing strategy, but well worth the results. You have a choice. Build a proven marketing system that works, or continue being a promoter wondering why you can’t generate more revenue for your small business. Sometimes a little straight talk is called for…:) To your success, Matt |
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Tags: | The Worst Number In Business |
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Do you know the worst number in business? Did you say zero? Almost… The worst number in business is the number 1. Here’s why… If you are dependent on ONE source of leads for your business, you are already in trouble. I don’t care if it is referrals, pay per click (PPC), direct mail, or email marketing. Relying on a one source is dangerous, especially in this new economy. Smart small business owners are realizing that the convergence of offline and online marketing is the WAY to build a marketing system to generate leads on a regular basis. More importantly, having the peace of mind that if they lose one lead or revenue source, they can keep trucking along. Here’s how you can start moving your business in the right direction today: 1) Grab a piece of paper and write down all of the way leads and prospects come into your business today. 2) Highlight which of those sources produce the most results for you now. Ask yourself, “Does my business depend on one source for leads and new business?”. If so, move to step 3. 3) If you are in fact dependent on one referral partner, one lead source, or one tactic you need more sources. From the list you created, start outlining a list of more ways you could cost effectively generate leads for your business. 4) Create a plan. Now, grab that calendar and I want you to focus on building one lead generation tactic each month. If it takes 2 months, don’t worry about it. Just keep adding to your system, one layer at a time… 5) Pat yourself on the back. I know, it sounds corny but most business owners don’t get to step #2. I guarantee if you take the five steps above, your business will be better off for it. More importantly, you will be generating more leads and business than ever before. As you know, it doesn’t happen overnight. Through patience and persistence you will have a marketing system you can rely on, even in this economy. To your success, Matt |
| Sneaky Local Marketing Espionage |
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As we discussed, your local marketing will continue to “suck” if you don’t use the right keywords. In this post, I want to give you a sneaky little trick to pull a list of really juicy keywords right from your competitors websites. After the last exercise, you should have a list of the competitors you are competing with online in your local area. (Here is the link to that post if you didn’t read it..http://www.marketfin.com/does-your-local-marketing-suck/ ) Re-cap, after the last effort you should have a list of all the websites fighting for eyeballs in your local search space. Ok, time for a little local marketing espionage: Step 1) Visit your competitors website in your favorite web browser Step 2) In your web browser, Go to View | Page Source Step 3) In the middle of all the crazy looking HTML programming, look for the text that says: “<title>” and “<meta keyword=>” Each of these will be followed by a list of keywords that your competitors are using. Yep, right there out in the open. Pay attention to how they are used. DON’T just copy and paste these on your website. You can use these keywords to maximize your results quickly, especially if yours are blank. Many small businesses have a blank title or keyword tags. At a minimum have your web developer add those local terms that make the most sense. Including your business name as well is always a good idea. Repeat this step for the top competitors on your list and you will be well on your way to competing head to head in your local online marketing space. You can use this keyword list for optimizing your website, integrating into your online blog or website content, and Pay Per Click or Social Media campaigns. As always, let me know if I can help! Go Target, Attack, and Profit, Matt |
| Local Marketing Like Spaghetti Sauce? |
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A little off the wall post today, but hey those are the best kind… Watch this video as Malcolm Gladwell discusses differentiation. This has many applications for your small business. Enjoy, Matt |
| The “1″ Sentence That Will Generate More Leads |
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I recently read about and used a strategy so simple and effective I had to share it… Quite honestly, it is so good I need to use it more myself and make it a habitual response to a question many small business owners get on a daily or weekly basis. Especially those of us that are heavy networkers. Here it is…How many times does someone ask, “How are you?”, or “How is business?”. Quite often I imagine… How often to you (or I) respond with “Great!”, or “Good”? Too often… So here’s the small tweak, the one sentence that I have found first hand will generate more leads for your business. Instead of responding with a simple “Great”, say this:
Then, have the cards ready or better yet a referral card for them to hand out. Very simple, Extremely effective. Let’s make this a habit together. To your success and prosperity, Matt |
| 3 Lead Generation Tips For Your Business |
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Are you short on leads? Do you need a system to create leads on auto-pilot for your business? Sure you do… I have small business owners consistently ask me how to generate more leads for their business. While these tips aren’t a shortcut to a successful lead generation system, they will kick start your efforts… Here are a few lead generation ideas for your business: Tip #1 - Ask More Questions - Head right over to search.twitter.com and start searching for keywords related to your product or service. Find those conversations that are already occurring and send a Direct Message to the person and ask them how you can help. Ask them what they like and dislike about your particular industry, product, or service. Focus on adding value to them. I guarantee if you make this a habit you will grab a couple new clients in the process. Tip #2 - Yelp! For Help - Customer service sites like yelp are making it possible to eaves drop on your customers. Although we are more likely to say things on the net we would not say face to face does not mean your customers will say it on your site. Companies like Yelp encourage customers to come to their websites and lay at the good, the bad and the ugly of other companies. You may find it worth while to visit these sites to find customers that are satisfied with your company and reward them or find customers unsatisfied and try to make them happy again. Trolling these sites should defiantly be part of your market strategy. Tip #3 - Be a Connector – If you want more leads for your business, give first. Here’s what you can do. Target one business in your network that you think you can promote to your list of clients or even prospects. Send an email or highlight that business as a business of the month. I guarantee if you do this once a month, you will start getting referral leads back into your business like never before. Remember, if you create value for others first you will always win. I am testing a few strategies using this technique. They are already yielding some great results. More to come on my little experiment soon… These are just a few quick tips I thought will help you if you are stuck. As always, let me know if I can help you. My purpose is to help you and your business make more money faster with proven lead generation and marketing systems for your business. |
| Marketing Tip: Market Research Using Yelp |
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The beauty of Yelp.com and other social search websites is that you can read real authentic reviews from prospects just like yours. Why is that important you say? Well, first off you can find out potentially what customers are saying about your competitors. Do a search and find out. If you can’t find your competitors, search lateral markets and get a sense of what consumers like and dislike. If you find that your competitor is getting beat up for always being late, guess what…You may want to focus on responsiveness and timeliness. If you are a plumber, and the complaints are about leaving messes to clean up. Guess what…Again, focus on how your crew is the cleanest in town. By all means don’t just go out there saying you do stuff and don’t actually follow through. If you have to tweak your operations first, it may be required. But you get my point…Here’s the real nugget. What I want you to do is start searching using keywords from your industry. Open up a text editor on your computer and start reading, copying and pasting the comments and reviews from Yelp or other Social Search sites. After you have compiled a good set of information, (both good and bad reviews) you are ready to dive a little deeper. Make a list of the things they like and dislike. If Bob the landscaper is always on time, note down timeliness. But more importantly, highlight the EXACT phrase they use to describe what they like or don’t like. This is the nugget. When you are marketing to your suspects and prospects you need to use THEIR language to describe their problem and the solution. NOT your words. Yelp and other sites are perfect for this because you can literally use the words right out of their mouth to create your headlines, blog copy, direct mail, and even email campaigns. With the power of Social Media, you have enough market research ammo in Yelp alone to keep you busy for a bit. So get out there and…Target, Attack, and Profit! Cheers, Matt |
| Part 2: Put Your Marketing On Auto-Pilot |
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If you haven’t read Part 1 of this post from yesterday STOP, don’t pass go read it now before you proceed… RECAP: 1) We have a high level list of follow-up sequences organized by product, service, and target market. 2) We prioritized our list, and focused on ONE and only ONE follow-up sequence that will give us the most bang for the buck. 3) We started our automated marketing system by creating our specific content for each step in our follow sequence. Whether it was an email, post card, newsletter, or other tactic…You sat down and focused on the specific call to action, and you created a message that was consistent throughout the entire campaign. Here’s where it gets fun…Now we get to leverage technology. If you don’t have a CRM system right now, you need one. If you are using a CRM system now, you can bolt on any of the tools I am going to mention below and enhance your existing process. It will be a little more sticky as you will have data in two places (which isn’t recommended, but ultimately up to you). Many of the new tools are built to handle your automated follow-up sequences that let you create a series of steps that can be executed in sequence. Here’s an example of a simple campaign: 1) User visits your website 2) They sign up for your newsletter 3) Immediately they receive a welcome email with the first newsletter 4) The software sends a request to your printer or mail-house and sends them a thank you postcard 5) Monthly they now receive your newsletter Now this is just one example, and you can get pretty sophisticated. As you can see, all of that happened without my intervention. It is CRITICAL that you are careful in the “blueprint” phase in creating a rock solid sequence. Remember this is going to happen “auto-magically”. The power is infinite if you follow the process. Here are a couple systems I am fond of: Infusionsoft – A little more expensive but well worth it in the long run. It handles email, fax, voice broadcast, and direct mail. Ace of Sales - A rising star in my book. It is only $20 per month and let’s you do email, eZine’s, direct mail, and postcards. Very simple, and powerful. Great for smaller businesses. SendPepper – Very simple as well, handles email and postcards. Remember, take your time and hammer out one sequence at a time. After you have a few sequences in place, loop back and start adding additional steps. In many cases you will find that you can loop prospects and customers from one sequence to another, winding them through your maze of offers while you maximize your marketing dollars and increase your profits! Hopefully you found this helpful! If I can help you, let me know… Cheers, Matt |
| 3 Tips To Jumpstart Your Referral Engine |
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If you are like most small business owners I speak with, one of their primary sources of leads is word-of-mouth and referrals. After studying the main differences in those businesses that excel at word-of-mouth, I have come up with some conclusions that will more than likely help you business as well. Here are three (3) tips to Jumpstart your referral engine: Tip # 1 – Expect Referrals – If you do such an insanely good job for your clients, why wouldn’t you expect them to refer you? I am shocked how little business owners ask for a referral. If you start expecting referrals as a component of doing business with you, I think you will be surprised with the results. A little “law of attraction” never hurts. Tip # 2 – Create A Referral System – I think one problem we all run into is that we don’t integrate referrals into our overall marketing and sales process. This includes making statements like, “My job is to make you so excited about the job I did, that you will refer 3 others that need my product or service”. Or, you may have an ongoing internal marketing campaign highlighting recent work you did, then ask if they know of any others that might need your assistance as well. If you don’t ask, you won’t receive. Your clients are busy. Many times it takes a gentle nudge to remind them you exist and how you can assist others. Tip # 3 – Give First! – One powerful referral tactic is to focus on being the “connector”. If you aren’t part of an existing networking group, start your own database of those you can refer business. When you find a prospect or client that needs another businesses product or service give a referral. By taking the first step and referring business, you will build good will and reciprocity when the opportunity arrives to refer you business. You can also use this technique if you desire a relationship with a potential partner. Seek out opportunities for THEM, then open the conversation talking about how you can help them with their efforts FIRST. Then, start building the relationship to feed your referral engine. Have a great weekend! Go Target, Attack, and Profit! ~Matt |
| Less Marketing = More Leads (really?) |
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As Americans we like to subscribe to the theory of bigger is better, but that isn’t always true when it comes to marketing. Especially today, in the age of Social Media and total transparency. You can’t just hit a button and SPAM someone with 50 Tweets, or 10 emails in a week and expect the leads and sales to roll in. It just doesn’t work that way. I see this time and time again. The tools are so efficient, that is is almost TOO EASY to post the comment, send the email, blast the Tweets, and business owners forget about the best interest of their prospect. They only think of their own need, before putting their prospects and their needs first. Where less is actually more… What if, you actually gave your best stuff away. All your secrets, pulled out all the stops and just gave it away. This is often referred to as moving the “Free Line”. Basically to say that when marketing to your ideal client, you should be giving them the best content you have. Help them solve their biggest and hairiest problem. Maybe it through an email, your blog, or maybe you crank a quick video out. But help them solve their biggest problem related to your product or service, or your industry. Wait a second, that’s my “secret sauce” you say… I know, it seems counterintuive but that’s hwo you build trust. You want your ideal client to say Holy Cow, if they are GIVING this kind of content away, I wonder what it would be like to be a client. And that’s where you build your authority and position yourself as an expert. So, back to less marketing… Don’t stop marketing, but make sure every interaction, post, and piece of content is the best stuff you have. Do a quick inventory of all the marketing you do and make sure it solves a problem. One key warning sign is if all of your marketing talks about YOU and not your prospect. Go Target, Attack, and Profit! ~Matt |
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