Not getting enough qualified leads through the door?
It might not be the marketing tactics that are the problem, but who you are aiming them at. Effective marketing starts with choosing the right target. Target your efforts at the wrong people/businesses, and you could be wasting time, energy and money. Find the right people/businesses to target, and you could improve your results without spending anything extra.
Most businesses have a rough idea of whom they are targeting but in most cases they also want to cast their net as widely as possible. If they have a bigger market to aim at then it stands to reason that they can attract more customers. The problem is that this is rarely the case – people respond better to marketing that speaks to them individually and casting a wide net is expensive.
Even if you identify a single market, there’s a good chance that there will be different groups within that market. For example, you might target small businesses, but small businesses can be anything from a freelance service provider to a busy restaurant to a retail shop. They are all very different and what suits one might not suit the others.
Your most likely customers are the groups within the groups. The ones that will benefit the most from what you have to offer. Ideally you will want to find groups that are small enough for you to target effectively but still big enough to be worthwhile. Each group should be clearly defined and be as similar to each other as possible.
You should be able to say clearly how your product or service will benefit them and, in the best-case scenario, you will stand a decent chance of becoming a major player in that market.
Now that you know whom you want to target, you need to find out as much about them as possible. Some businesses find it useful to create ‘customer personas’, which are detailed descriptions of typical customer types – usually referred to by name. For example, you could create a persona for a restaurant owner (‘Restaurant Rick’) and café owner (‘Café Claudia’) and a fast food outlet owner (‘Fast Food Freddie’).
Creating these detailed personas will help you visualize the customer in more detail and make decisions about what will and will not interest them and what kind of marketing they will respond to.
Now that you have your customers worked out, you need to create marketing materials for them. The problem is that the sales letter that you want to use for Fast Food Freddie won’t work for Café Claudia. People respond to things that are designed for them and ignore everything else.
If you describe the problems that Restaurant Rick faces everyday – and how you will solve them – then Rick will respond. But Claudia and Freddie don’t have the same problems, so they won’t. Every marketing message and individual piece of marketing material needs to be customized for the prospect persona you will be targeting.
Using effective target marketing strategies means paying attention to the details and knowing whom your prospective customers are. It may seem like hard work to create or customize individual marketing campaigns for every customer type but the results will speak for themselves.
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Marketing Strategies to Improve Your Business
If you want more leads for your business then pay per lead is an attractive choice. But is it the right one and how does it work?
It is exactly what it sounds like: You pay for leads instead of paying a flat rate for advertising or marketing. There are lots of ways that this can be organized but the main benefit to you is that you don’t have to pay for any marketing that doesn’t result in new leads.
To pay for leads means you get a fixed price for each lead, which eliminates a lot of the risk that is usually associated with marketing and advertising your business. So long as you can do a good enough job of closing sales, then it’s perfectly possible to adopt paying for leads as a strategy to grow your entire business.
The way it works depends on what kind of system you set up or use. Here are a few options that might be worth looking at:
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Online Radio Stations?
Due to their size and ability to reach niche audiences, they tend to attract a much more targeted audience than mass market, traditional radio stations.
Potentially…
This makes advertising on them an attractive proposition to marketers who target niche groups. Moreover, most Internet radio stations will also create podcasts of popular shows – recorded versions that can be downloaded and listened to at any time – creating an added attraction.
The natural starting point is an Internet search to find stations that suit your target audience. Ideally you will find stations that combine information relevant to your niche with a relevant audience. If you sell widgets, it might make sense to advertise on Widget Radio – unless, the only people who listen to Widget Radio are widgets makers like you.
Like any traditional station, online stations should be able to provide you with key demographic information about their listeners. Study this info and listen to the shows before going any further.
Depending on the outcome you want, you can choose between audio ads, onsite advertising (like banners or text links) or sponsorship. Budget permitting, you can combine sponsorship and audio ads with banners and buttons to increase visibility, CTR (click through rate), retain attention for better conversion and ultimately, increased ROI (return on investment).
One of the most attractive aspects of internet radio advertising is the simple fact that your customers are only a click away to your website. Not only can this significantly increase your ROI but it also allows exact, detailed tracking of results. By carefully measuring what works – and what doesn’t – you can more effectively plan your marketing.
Taken together, the targeted listenership, ability to combine visual and audio advertising and detailed tracking possibilities make internet radio an attractive alternative that could give you a leg up on the competition.
Online Radio Listenership Figures
“In any given week, 8.1 million people listen to radio via the Internet, either live or through a Listen Again service, and 1.87 million listen to a Podcast.” Source: Rajar/Ipsos Mori
In America alone, the number of people watching less TV and spending more time on the internet has grown by more than 400% in the past few years and more than 50% of them have consumed streaming media. Source: Rajar/Ipsos Mori
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Buying leads is a common mortgage lead generation method. Over the last few years it’s been a very effective strategy indeed. Due to high demand, if you just “did the numbers”, it was relatively easy to make a profit.
Unfortunately, things have tightened, causing two problems. First off, demand has obviously weakened. Secondly, your prospect still gets flooded with calls from competing mortgage agents. What’s worse is that your prospect can’t tell you apart from the others. To her all mortgage lenders look and sound the same.
You need to separate from the pack. But how? Cold calling and prospecting is hard work so buying leads should still be part of your overall strategy. You can use the services of different mortgage lead generation companies or partner with someone to cold call for you. Buying leads may still provide some work, but smart mortgage agents are busy building a network of referring allied professionals – and setting themselves apart form the pack in the process.
An allied professional is a professional service provider who frequently comes in contact with your potential prospects, but who doesn’t sell mortgages themselves. They could be real estate agents, accountants, insurance agents or lawyers. We all know that referred business is better business. Referred prospects will likely know a bit about you and you come with an endorsement from the person doing the referring – a person they already trust and do business with. In short, the prospect will listen to you, take your advice, and buy from you precisely because their other advisor introduced you. Your job is simply to make the process easy and comfortable for the client.
It’s worth remembering however that referral business doesn’t come for free. While there may be no monetary cost, you need to invest your time, energy and professional reputation into building the right relationships.
They’re not just helping you. You’re helping them. Most pros want to take care of as many of their clients’ needs as possible. By doing this they raise the chances of keeping that client over the long-term. They also like to be looked on as the expert and the ‘go to person’ with the connections. If you do your job well your referral partner will look good too. Moreover, by having “his people” service his clients he lowers the chance of someone else stealing the business.
If you’re smart, you’ll also look for ways to refer business back to your professional partners. Not only will it cement the relationship between you but it will also encourage them to send you even more referrals.
It’s important to remember that you want allied professionals who are successful and who are working as hard as you. That’s step one – drawing up a list of possible partners.
From there your goal is to make working with you attractive, simple and rewarding for your potential partners. Developing and working with networks of allied professional is not a cheap mortgage lead generation tactic. It might not cost you any cash but it certainly takes time and effort.
OK, sounds great. But how do it get started?
First of all, this is a soft-sell approach with a focus. Your objective is to create business alliances, not to sit back and wait for them to come to you. At the same time using a hard-sell approach to build these alliances is likely to put other professionals off working with you. They may be afraid you unleash your hard-sell techniques on their loyal customers. Be professional, be willing to help and be straight to the point.
Develop a Specialty or Niche
To attract professional partners, you need something that sets you apart from your competitors. Instead of being just another mortgage guy, you want to become the new home mortgage lead generation specialist, the small business owner’s mortgage pro, the multi-unit mortgage advisor or the government secured mortgage expert. Don’t fear being pigeon-holed, people will remember you and you can leverage that into new fields over time.
Build a Local Territory
It can be as big or as small as you want. It doesn’t even have to be your own neighborhood. If there’s a more lucrative part of town make that your territory. You want to be the local expert that all the allied professionals call when they have work in that area.
By drawing a defined territory it’s easier for you to manage, market to, and defend. Plus, it’s easier to travel and meet these professionals in person at their office, over lunch or at a professional business function.
Finally, success breeds success. If you can demonstrate your success, that encourages professionals to work with you. That’s much easier to accomplish in a well-defined territory.
Build and Demonstrate Your Value
Become an expert. Hold workshops, teach courses, present to local business groups and write articles for the local press. This raises your profile and demonstrates your expertise to other working professionals in your area. Make sure to keep clean copies and reprints of all your press (articles, write-ups, and reports) and use this material as supporting evidence of your expertise when approaching potential partners. All this makes you more attractive to customers too – making it easier to refer business to you.
Hire or Partner With an Assistant
You must be on top of your physical game. You want to be rested, cool, and calm when you hold meetings with the allied professionals. This is hard to do if you’re running around all day chasing leads and sales. Let your assistant do that.
Rewarding Referrals
Depending on your local rules and regulations, always reward referrals that turn into business. You should even consider giving a small gift for an honest lead or referral even if it doesn’t turn into business. Not only is it good business etiquette but it also encourages more of the same behavior.
Referral fees and rewards can be a touchy issue for some people. So, leave the possibility open and ask your allied professional if they have thoughts for or against it. Cash incentives may, in some cases, be too blunt so be creative in rewarding those that help you grow your business.
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You do have a list don’t you?
It is often said that your profit is in your list, but many companies simply do not take the time and effort to build a prospect list effectively. A good prospect list is a goldmine of future sales – and built and used effectively, it can become your first source for new business.
List building is particularly effective online – even if your business is done offline. Building a list online allows you to target people with similar needs – based on the information that they search for online. Prospects with similar needs are more likely to respond to well-targeted campaigns.
A useful prospect list is ALWAYS based on permission – permission for you to contact a prospect in the future. If you don’t get their permission, it’s spam. Your first consideration should therefore be how to encourage prospects to give you that permission – how can you encourage them to subscribe to your list?
The simple fact that you have a form on your website is not a guarantee that everyone that visits will give you their details. So, how do you go about it then?
Given the amount of spam and other junk email that people receive, the permission to contact your prospects with further information is a valuable asset. Call it a permission asset. To gain a permission asset you need to offer something valuable in return. Usually this will be useful information – a special report, ebook, white paper or newsletter for example. You should keep the information you ask for to a minimum and make it extremely clear how you intend to use their contact info.
If you take the time to build and use your list effectively it can become your greatest marketing asset.
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Email Marketing & List Building Strategies & Target Marketing
Are you using lead generation articles? Should you be?
Using articles for lead generation can be a great way to attract new prospects and demonstrate your expertise at the same time. They are simply short informative articles written about a topic that your potential customers are interested in. Once you’ve written them they can be placed in various places online or even used offline. Either way, by giving away free information, you can encourage prospects to visit your website and request further information.
Your lead generation articles should answer a specific problem that your customers might have. So, the best place to start is with them. The first thing you should do is some basic keyword research to find out what kinds of things your prospects are searching for online (get more information in our free special report). You will also want to have a basic understanding of the kinds of problems they are trying to solve. With those two pieces of information you can start to write a list of likely topics.
Lead generation articles should be simple and provide a real solution – they are not a sales pitch. You want to demonstrate that you understand the problem and can provide a solution. Start with a basic bullet point outline of what you want to say. Usually you will have an opening paragraph that explains the problem. Follow that with a simple list of the key points or best solutions. Each point in this list can become a subheading for your article. Use bullet points or numbered lists when appropriate for easier readability. Finally, you should close off your article with a simple concluding paragraph to sum up what you talked about.
Using a simple structure makes your articles easier to write, logical and easier to read or skim. Aim for about 500 words total and if you are writing for the web, make sure to include your key words and phrases. Use examples to help illustrate your points and keep the tone light but professional.
There’s no point in writing articles for lead generation if you don’t promote them well. Writing articles takes time so the best bet is to try to use each article in a variety of ways to ensure you get the best results.
For example, you can:
Try to use each article in as many ways as possible to improve your results but remember to rewrite it slightly for each place that you want to use it. If you start with a good outline you can work from that and make the job of rewriting easier.
Informative articles can be a great way to generate leads, bring people to your website and show that you ‘know your stuff’ – but it is a long term strategy. Commit to writing regular articles, use a simple structure to help you and distribute them as widely as you can. If you do that over a period of time you will start to see real benefits.
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Lead Generation & Lead Generation Techniques & Online Marketing Services & Target Marketing
