Epiphany Marketing's Strategic Marketing Blog

What can you do to sustainably reach out?

You know it… and I know it. Offline marketing the way you’ve always done it doesn’t work. (Stick with me for a video clip about what is working.)

Direct mail response is down. Your hometown newspaper is quickly becoming your hometown leaflet. I’m willing to wager that more copies of your local yellow pages hit the recycling bin the day they got delivered than ever before. (And the ones that didn’t get recycled that day are proudly being used as doorstops — if they’re heavy enough!)

Most trade shows are ghost towns… and the ones that aren’t have attendees instead of buyers. Magazines and other print media have a little life left in them — especially when they’re highly niched.

So you’re in a small business. Either you own the business, or you’re responsible for marketing. It seems like you’ve barely had time to catch your breath. (Maybe you haven’t!)

What the heck are you going to do to find new prospects and customers?

How To Get Sustainable Marketing Results in Your Small Business

Recently a small business owner approached me. Nearly 2 decades ago, Becki bought an already successful florist shop from its original owner. She’s hard-working, professional, and full of ingenuity. She was referred by her hometown web designer. They had built her a functional and visually-appealing website almost 10 years ago, which they’d overhauled once since then. Every day Becki and her crew get new orders from their website.

But like you, Becki wasn’t satisfied with her results.

She was nowhere to be found in Google for the most important searches. Actually, using one of the tools in our bag of tricks, I found her site on page 112. Needless to say: no traffic from Google.

But Becki had already figured out that while she needed to solve that problem quickly, even that wasn’t going to be enough. She was astute enough to know that customers demand interaction — something that is prohibitively difficult in offline media and nearly so in most traditional websites. She recognized that she needed a Facebook presence.

Since a substantial percentage (I’m not going to share the numbers here just to protect her private business information) of her business revolved around weddings, she recognized that brides — especially the twenty-somethings — are using Facebook.

In short, here were the problems she faced:

• She needed to improve her Google rankings
• She needed to put her business on Facebook
• And perhaps most importantly… she needed a strategy and a plan to know what to do with everything to achieve sustainable ongoing results

After I met with Becki, I outlined a simple 3-step plan that would solve all of the above challenges and more. Within 2 weeks after we started working with her, her website was on page 2 of Google. We built out her Facebook presence, and she quickly began gathering fans.

Her ongoing maintenance strategy requires just minutes per week. Some weeks they even skip it completely (not something I recommend).

Just a few months later, Becki’s shop has 315 fans on Facebook. She’s received thousands of new visitors to her websites, and countless phone calls.

But Here’s the Kicker… Her Sales Have Multiplied

Becki told me yesterday that by the end of this month, she will have processed as many orders in the first 3 months of this year as she did in all of last year. Here’s what she had to say:

You can hear her whole story in a free webinar on Thursday, March 18th at 9PM US Eastern Time. Space is limited! Reserve your spot here right now. I’ll show you exactly how to do what she did!

Now… you may be saying, “I don’t sell products online.” No problem. At the very least, you can get your phone to ring (just like Becki did)… or whatever it is that you need people to do to get into your sales process.

Don’t wait! Register now even if you’re not sure you can make it. Talk to you soon!

Well 2009 is in full swing. My question for you is:

How does your pipeline look?

If you’re not satisfied with the number of new prospects or leads coming in to your business, it’s time to get serious about what you’re doing to bring them in. Here are 5 ways to gain new customers on a budget:

1. Get to the Top of the Search Engines
   In particular, pay attention to Google. Most strategies that help you get to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) on Google will also work well with the others.  Don’t know how? Training is easy to come by these days, and you can do it yourself or put a member of your team on it. If you’re a salesperson, start blogging about your customers and their needs.
2. Make Use of Social Media
   Once the exclusive territory of geeks, social media is a now easier-to-use than ever before. Two important ones for connecting with people and creating exposure: Facebook and Twitter. The demographics will surprise you — chances are your customers, buyers, prospects, decision-makers, and champions are active. 2 tips: don’t commit these social media sins, and put a strategy in place to avoid the time suck.
3. Communicate Frequently With Customers (Past & Present) and Prospects
   Given the information overload we all deal with, it’s easy for the people you already have relationships with to forget about you. It’s not necessarily that they want to. They’re just as busy as you are. Obviously it’s possible to communicate too frequently, but chances are you’re to busy to do that anyway. Tip: make sure your communication has value.
4. Revisit Your Message
   How many aspects of your life can you count that haven’t changed substantially in the last 12-24 months? Chances are your customers’ businesses are the same way. Is your message out of date? Does it accurately reflect the way that your products and services serve your customers and prospects changing needs? Tip: the message you’re sending may not be what you think it is.
5. Ask Great Questions and Listen More
   Given the rapidly changing business landscape, you need to know — now more than ever — what your customers are thinking. Are they cutting budgets or changing spending patterns? What problems are they trying to solve? Take them out to lunch, out for coffee, or create reasons to get on the phone and find out what’s going on. What you learn will surprise you. It’s also a great time to ask for referrals — your lowest cost customers ever!

What strategies are you implementing right now to load up your pipeline with new business? Certainly, if you need help with these or other 21st-Century methods of keeping your pipeline full, we’d be happy to help. Our distance-learning hands-on training and coaching program is getting phenomenal results with our students.  Of course, consulting services are available as well. If you’re interested, drop me a comment.

By the way, we practice what we preach. I dare you to follow me on Twitter.

We discussed previously that the last thing you want to trim out of your budget during a recession is your marketing.

Here’s some actual data (Hat tip: Rod Alan Richardson via Twitter @rodalan) on previous recessions that reveals some very interesting facts:

• maintaining your marketing budget helps not only during a recession, but afterward
• your ROI may not be as high during a recession, but your actual profits in other years may not be as high as you think
• market share is as important right now as profitability (more so, if you ask me)
• the idea that you can cut back “because everyone else is” is foolhardy

There’s quite a bit more data out there, but you can read the article to get it.

My point is this: cut anything… heck, cut everything, but don’t cut your marketing budget.

The Big Key

That being said: spend it more effectively. Gain the know-how to utilize and leverage 21st-Century technologies to get better results. Here are some tips:

1. Fix your website.  Look at 2 things: is it showing up when your actual prospects are searching Google and those other search engines (I’m sure there must be others).  And secondly: is it starting and furthering relationships?  (Hint: measure!)
2. Drop your print yellow pages ad.  With certain very specific exceptions (highly-niched specialty books that have actual users), you don’t need this.  Keep a listing, yes.  Don’t waste your money on display ads.
3. Buy internet yellow pages listings.  And other online local business search listings. Here’s how to not screw up: be sure you can track everything. Know which listing is getting you what results. Do not do this if you haven’t done #1 above.
4. Email. If you don’t yet have a database, start one.  Today.  Put a strategy in place to deliver value to your prospects and customers (hint: don’t be boring) on a consistent basis.  Then execute that strategy. Divert internal resources as necessary to accomplish this.
5. Manage your time with a hatchet. Figure out where your energies are being wasted and cut the stuff out of your schedule. Do it now.  You can’t be effective if you’re floundering around.

Want more?  Let me know.

By the way… if you couldn’t make it to our recent “Results Now Marketing” seminar, the DVDs are coming soon. They’re worth their weight in gold. Sign up to be notified over here.