Picture these two distinctive scenarios to get an idea of the difference between real, sound marketing strategies, and the lack of any real marketing strategy at all¡
* Scenario 1: You're walking from house to house. At each house, you knock on the door, wondering if the homeowners inside just might have any interest in buying what you're selling. Today's a good day, because after 9 houses, someone gives you the time of day, and actually expresses an interest. After 9 rejections, you finally end up in a house where the owner displays some interest in your product, lets you in for a demo, and after a 20 minute conversation, the homeowner finally decides that today's not the day, and that maybe they'll buy what you're selling another time.
* Scenario 2: A potential customer who clearly has an interest in the product or service you provide comes to you for help. They are already looking for exactly what you have to offer, and have actually been searching for someone just like you. They've come to the conclusion that what you have to offer they can't find anywhere else, and they chose you deliberately. Your entire sales process is based on limiting who you accept as a client, because you have more business than you can possibly handle.
These two scenarios encompass two very common marketing techniques. Scenario 1 presents the cold approach to selling, where you go out looking for the clients. Scenario 2 is called lead generation, and it requires a strategic approach to presenting your message to prospective clients in a way that will motivate them to come to you. While the cold approach has been proven historically, it has been exhausted by over-use, and has been diminishing in effectiveness for more at least the last 50 years. Lead generation, however, is fairly new in terms of systematic application, and not many business owners have yet become aware of this powerful tool to create more sales. Lead generation starts with attracting people to you for your unique expertise and offers, and when I refer to marketing strategies to get more clients, this is what I mean.
It's never too late to invest in lead generation strategies now. Here are a few starting points:
1. Throw out the fluff in your marketing tools. Emotional appeals are effective, but sensational ads are not. The new and more preferred way of advertising products is news advertising, where you rule out the hype and stick to the facts. This is a busy world and customers have no time to sift through propaganda to get to the juicy part. You need to stand out from the clutter by delivering powerful, succinct, and highly targeted messages designed to do one thing: elicit a response. Whenever you invest in a marketing or advertising campaign, think of the campaign as needing to "go for the jugular" - evolve a requirement that your marketing material set a highly targeted and specific mark, and carefully test, review, and optimize your results.
2. Write a business blog and/or a company newsletter. Not only does this establish you as a credible resource, it also attracts people who are interested in your products and services and allows you to interact on a personal level with them. Include a squeeze page on your website where people can opt in to receive your free newsletter and you can build a database of the e-mail addresses of people who might want to receive product updates in the future.
3. Harvest customer testimonials and reviews. One free way of generating leads is to let your customers do it for you. The happy customers, that is. Every sales process does not end with closing the sale. It is an open-ended relationship that continues for the life-time of that client. Weeks after your customer bought your product, contact them and ask if they have any problems or questions about it. Go above and beyond with your service, and you will be certain that your clients are happy. And when they thank you for providing such a wonderful product, it's time to ask for a little something in exchange¡ªa testimonial. Any satisfied customer would be glad to give it to you, and in some senses, they owe it to you for you providing the exceptional service. Don't be afraid to go beyond your competition and to be uniquely valuable to your clients.
4. Participate in niche discussion boards, forums, and social networks. There are a fair number of people out there who have a lot of questions about your product, service, or industry, and they are almost definitely out there posting these questions in online forums and discussion boards right now. People go where they can interact with other "real" people, and where they can ask and contribute their own answers to questions on their topics of interest. Join these discussions and provide real and valuable insights to people who are looking for answers. Be genuinely helpful, interesting, and personal. It is, of course, important to adhere to the rules of the forum or network. So, be smart, and avoid direct advertisements or solicitations. Use the social web to initiate and foster new relationships. Think for the longer term, and imagine the type of value you can provide for people long in advance of them considering hiring you. If you want people to come to you, you can add cliff hangers to your posts and in your signatures, with the old classic: "There's a lot more about this topic in my blog. You can find it here," and post a link. The most valuable facet of these social web spaces is the opportunity to really learn about the inner thoughts and emotions of your clients, and observe how they interact in their "natural" habitat.
5. Establish referral systems. Reward your existing customers for giving you referrals. This not only fosters customer loyalty, it also widens your customer base. Often, referral customers are your best customers, because they have been introduced to your offerings by someone they already know and trust, giving you an instant rapport. Plus, leveraging effective referral systems will significantly increase your average ROI on every marketing and advertising dollar. Think of it this way: if one out of every 3 new customers will also generate at least one referral customer, you've just added free business with a process that could be as simple as a 18 word question that you ask to every single client systematically, like clockwork:
"Do you know other people of similar quality to yourself who really would benefit from what we do?"
Of course, referral systems can also become very elaborate and complex. In fact, certain businesses are built entirely around innovative referral systems, where the entire infrastructure is a network of referral generating referral clients all selling a very boring, mundane underlying product. Often, these can go awry, and become a pyramid scheme or MLM scam, but if you are serious about understanding referral systems, there's nothing better to study.
6. Optimize your website for the search engines. When people type a search query into Google, it means they are looking for something they need. Even if you are the best person around to provide the exact solution to their need, if someone can't find in the first place they look, they probably will never find you at all. More than 80% of consumer purchases begin with an internet search, and upwards of 75% of business to business transactions do as well. With the vast majority of searches that are leading to a purchase, from the lowest to the highest priced transactions, how can you possible afford not to be on the first page of search results? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way of enhancing your website so people can find you easily when they look for you in search engines like Google. It involves techniques such as the use of keywords, link building, and meta-tagging, and can be learned for free online or successfully outsourced to experts. The complexity goes far beyond the scope of this article, but the bottom line: do it.
7. Include lots of ways to get in touch on your website. More and more people shop for goods and services online. Adding a contact page on your business website allows your potential customer more opportunities to contact you without having to give away your own e-mail address if you don't want to. However, if you are really committed, and have a fully functional and legitimate business, you can go further than the contact form. Augment the standard contact form with your social media accounts (LinkedIn, Twitter, other blogs) to give the impression of real accessibility and breed instant trust in your prospects and clients.
8. Provide free but useful information. When you give your customers something of value without asking for anything in return, you just showed them you care about them. You also have elicited one of the most fundamental and basic principles of human psychology that is universal across all cultures: reciprocity. This is the idea that, if you give something to me, I owe you something of equal value in return. If you invite me to your party, I owe you an invitation to my party. If you buy me lunch, I owe you a lunch. And if you buy me a new car, I'll feel indebted unless I in turn buy you one. Depending on your products, services, and target market, you could potentially generate significant interest, nearly free publicity, and great lead flow from the syndication of reports, e-books, teleseminars, interviews, webinars, podcasts, and home-study courses. The key is to be sure you're educational, not "pitchy" or selling, and providing something of real value where prospects and clients alike can learn something new from you with no cost, no risk, and no obligation.
9. Partner up with other businesses who have access to resources that you want or need, and form mutually beneficial alliances. This time, I saved the best for last. This technique, which has been called many things, from joint ventures and marketing alliances to host beneficiary or host parasite relationships. The master key to making this millenia old concept work for you is to always be asking: who already has access or has already created significant success doing exactly what I'm trying to do (or something very similar)? There will always be other enterprises who have access to nearly all the resources you could ever need, and if you are cooperative, clever, and helpful, you will almost always be able to strike a deal to get access to practically any resource you need. Whether you form an alliance to get access to a product you'd like to sell, to a customer list you'd like to sell to, or simply to cut the costs on generating leads by forming cross promotions and joint advertisements, you can always make your own resources go further and increase your efficiency and effectiveness by creative and careful use of partnerships & alliances. Think of one asset of one competitor or comparable business in your industry, and you've already taken the first step to forming your joint venture alliance. If you always remember to give before you try go get, you will find doors open to you that you never thought possible.
