Main Street Marketing Machines 2.0 Fusion Review: Prospecting Tools & Tips
This part of the Main Street Marketing Machines training is all about signing up customers. Mike Koenigs provides you with all the necessary tools you will EVER need to get your first client and then enlarge your business as much as you like. In order to sign up your first client you first have to identify high value prospects. As we’ve seen in earlier posts Traffic Geyser provides you with a great tool called Opportunity Finder that helps you do exactly that but keep in mind that you should always make the best of all the free information that is out there so don’t stick to just one technique however good it is. So what else can you do? There are other more conventional ways of identifying prospects. You could for instance:
• Review your local paper
• Keep your eyes open for direct mail solicitations
• Go through the Yellow Pages for your niche
People that have listed ads, send direct mail or are in the yellow pages are already in the process of paying good money for advertising and are hence better prospects for you. Another way would be to go through local print directories or Val Pak or even joining business networks like:
• The Chamber of Commerce • BNI
• A Kennedy-Glazer Chapter
You could even go to your local Trade Show and have in person talks with prospective clients. Remember that everything could either be done online or in person. Giving your sales pitch live is great but not always possible so make a video of your sales pitch and have all the prospects you can’t reach in person watch it. Having identified the prospects you should do some work before you contact them. Do a bit of research on them before hand and maybe even do some actual work for them in advance. You could for example do a quick review of their website, if they have one, making notes on the following points:
• Is their website capturing leads?
• Are they making good use of the Title tags on their site?
• Are they using videos?
You could then create a brief report with your recommendations. You could also submit their website on Google Maps or other free online directories. Doing this little piece of work before hand and without getting paid for it will show your prospects that you are serious about what you do and that you are already overdelivering. Having researched your prospects you are now ready to call them up and sell your services. We will see how MSMM helps you in that respect in the upcoming article. Stay tuned…
Tags: Fusion, Msmm, Part, Prospecting, Review, Tips, Tools
If you are trying to get the prospect on your list to buy a product or a service from your website then you need to know how to effectively treat the email you are sending to him.
The email should be treated as a third party in this case. This means that you are stepping aside and allowing the email to do the explaining for you.
The email should have enough information for your prospect and at the same time you should be careful about not over doing it. Here is a perfect example of ‘over doing it’: The other day I stumbled across a random website on internet marketing that shared some very interesting information, so I signed up for his mailing list. However when I received my first email from this guy, it took me about 10 minutes to read his entire email. This is way to long. It started off by saying: “Before I get started with sharing some valuable information and this amazing new product I have, I first need to take care of some admin stuff…bla bla bla…!”
Who cares about the admin stuff? Get to the point!
When you are directing your prospect to the product or service on your website – take them straight to the page where the product and service are. The prospect should not have to navigate through your site to find the product or service.
Now sometimes I am asked about follow-up emails – Should you send follow up emails to your own personal list? This is a tough question. If you are a small business and you are looking to get your name out there then you need to be very careful about this. People will find it very annoying if you keep on emailing them. Therefore I recommend the following: send out your weekly or monthly email, when you have something big going on – a new product, program etc.. then send out at least one or two follow up emails. Let your list know that this is a really huge thing that could help them and they cant miss out.
Always offer coupons or some kind of sales to get your prospects to buy from you.
A great way to improve your email marketing campaign is to simply see what the other successful people in your industry are doing.
How?
Here is what I do:
I created a separate email account and signed up for many different mailing lists. Once the emails started coming in – I then check to see which ones got me to click on a link and which ones made me delete them.
So like I said earlier – when the email had to much so called ‘information’ – it got deleted.
I found myself clicking on links in emails that had graphics within them. A great example for this is the Startupnation.com mailing list.
Btw – An email marketing company that I have read many positive reviews about them is icontact.com check them out.
When an email had to many graphics – it got deleted.
Another isssue that made me upset is when people mislead me.For example: On the sign up mailing list form of some sites it said: ” Sign up and get weekly free marketing tips..”, However I found my self getting weekly advertisements to join their programs or to buy a product. The moment you start misleading – people will not want to do business with you.
Another issue is what I call: The silly marketing tips emails. You sign up to a mailing list thats supposed to share weekly marketing tips. Instead you get these silly weekly marketing tips like:”Create a Facebook profile”"Make a video and upload it to Youtube” “Put a sticker with your business name on your car”
C’mon people…these tips are old! If you are in the information business – sometimes to you do need to share some of your ‘valuable’ secrets.
Remember: your goal is to get repeat business from your list – so treat them well!
Hillel
iyazam – The Ultimate Resource For The Aspiring Entrepreneur
Written by Hillel Porath
Website Marketer, Marketing For Israeli Exporters and Small Businesses, lead generation
Tags: Email, List, Marketing, Tips