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| 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 |
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Tags: | 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 |
