Posted by AndyM on August 24, 2010 under Business Growth | 
Often it is easy to assume that getting more of something requires spending more money. Luckily, that is not always true. When working with a company that would like to generate more leads, I start by reviewing what they are already doing. In almost every case, there are a number of improvements we can make without spending a penny more.
Here is a short list of places we can all look for “free” leads that saw our bait but just didn’t bite. These tips can apply to websites, brochures, advertisements, emails, and even our business cards.
Headline. Almost everything in marketing starts with a headline — the subject line of an e-mail, the top of a datasheet, the header of a website and more. How are your headlines? The best ones connect with the underlying, burning issue that our best prospects face at an emotional level (be sure to check out my prior post on Breaking the Preoccupation Barrier) . We can also think of a headline as a “promise.” To what new state we can deliver our clients with our product or service? Paint the picture of the place they want to go in the headline and we have a winner.
What they get, not what we do. With a headline that grabs attention, the content of our message (be it a video, text and an advertisement or e-mail, images, etc.) will produce better results for us if it describes the benefits our clients get, not the content of what we do or the methods of how we do it.
Testimonials. “Social proof” is a powerful force. No one wants to be the “sucker” who experimented with an unproven product or service and got burned. Demonstrate that we have helped others get what they wanted or where they wanted to go, and new prospects will feel more comfortable. Have our happy clients or customers tout the benefits of doing business with us, and we will have even better results. Testimonials about our product or service can go on the home page of our web site, on a brochure, in an email newsletter, even in our email signature.
Next topic, taking advantage of these principles with an effective call-to-action.
Posted by AndyM on June 21, 2010 under Business Growth |
- Provide a “wow” experience: we do a lot of work behind the scenes to provide our service, create or deliver our products, and help our clients and customers succeed. Our clients cannot be fully aware of this effort — they only know what they experience in brief interactions, engagement with our staff or (God forbid) navigating our pre-recorded telephone tree. Jan Carlzon, former CEO of SAS Airlines, aptly named this dynamic in his book Moments of Truth. We can all benefit from looking at our company through our clients’ eyes. Where can you transform a blah experience into a wow? More “wows” = more customers interested in referring their friends, relatives, clients, and colleagues to you.
- Be specific: just like defining our target audience, articulating specifically who can benefit from talking with us will yield much better results than trying to be all things to all people.
- Ask for one and you’ll get many: try this experiment — think of “anyone” who is a sports fan. Do you have a strong reaction? I’m looking for sports fans, is there anyone you want to refer to me? Now try this — who is the most fanatical baseball fan you know? Now does someone come to mind? When someone asks us to think of the most, the best, the tallest, the oldest, the largest, etc. our brains take it as a challenge. There is an answer to that question and we feel compelled to find it. If my target audience were baseball fans, guess what I would ask after securing the most fanatical fan in someone’s life? “Who is the second most fanatical…?”
- Talk about the benefit of contacting you, not of hiring you or your company: as we’ve discussed before, sales is a dating process. What both the referrer and the person you hope to meet need to know is how he or she will be better off after simply meeting or talking with us. We get better results by selling the meeting, not the value of doing business with us.
- Teach them how: when we succeed in describing who would benefit from speaking with us, trigger the most likely person to have a problem we can solve, and make it clear how a simple conversation will help him or her, our referral partner will be eager to contribute. It stands to reason that we will be doing him or her a service by making it easy to refer. Have a plan about how you would like that introduction to go and make sure it’s easy for him or her to execute.
Posted by AndyM on June 9, 2010 under Business Growth |
I would guess that most of you reading this post would place “increasing profits” as a high priority in your business right now. Great! If we throw in “not work harder” as a parallel goal to “increase profits,” I submit that what you are really asking for is a business that consistently attracts new prospects and converts a high percentage of them into profitable customers…like a machine.
The “specifications” of this machine: it brings good prospects to you, makes the job of converting them into customers easier, and tells you what needs “tuning” over time.
- Contact Management Infrastructure — processes and information systems that allow you to: capture new prospect contact information quickly, categorize them, and ensure that proper follow up will happen. This same system should allow you to easily see how healthy your prospect flow, conversion rate, and profitability per client is.
- A Refined Target — ask yourself, who can benefit the most from my product or service? You should also consider surveying past clients to learn why they decided to buy from you over their other options and focus on people who may have that same need or want.
- Communicate the “Ultimate Result” — for marketing that gets attention, focus on the results you can help people achieve. When in doubt, think about marketing of diet programs and weight loss products. They get your attention with “Lose 20 Pounds in 20 Days” not “We’ve got the best diet, excercise, and nutrition products around.” When trying to get the attention of your target audience, forget about how you do what you do — talk about what results they’ll get…period.
- An “Irresistible Offer” as a Call-to-Action — when your marketing successfully gets the attention of someone in your target audience, give them a “no brainer” reason to contact you. Read carefully — not to do business with you. I call this a “first date” call-to-action. What information, advice, product sample can you offer that any reasonable person in your target audience would say “of course!” to?
- Follow-up Plan — with a compelling call to action, you must have a foolproof and thorough follow up strategy. Worried about feeling like a nuisance? Ever hear the phrase “the marketing is the product?” Many people have a negative reaction to that phrase, as if it means there’s no there there when someone becomes a client. Think of it this way, what if simply by participating in your marketing and your follow up, your prospects will get closer to the ultimate result that they want, and that you can help them reach faster if they become a client? Create a follow up plan that keeps your business in the forefront of your prospects minds while also offering them value.
- Present Options — by offering multiple ways, levels, packages, bundles…through which your prospects can become your client, you give them more power in the buying process. Offer a single product, price point, or solution and you’re basically telling them to “take it or leave it.” And guess what, more of them will “leave it” than you would like!
For more ideas and examples to help you build your client attraction and conversion machine, simply click the “Seven Levers of Profit Growth” link to the right to request your free copy of our eBook.
