General Article

Marketing Automation – Fixing Your Follow-Up Failure With Technology

People buy when they’re ready to buy – not before. 67% of the prospective buyers that tell you no today will be ready to buy in the next year. ~ Gartner Research. So how will you be ready when they are? By following up, that’s how. Sadly many businesses do a poor job of marketing follow up, and in this article you’ll learn the startling facts of just how bad it is, but more importantly you’ll discover just how easy it is to fix your follow up failure and double your sales. 

Why companies don’t follow up:

They forget

They focus ONLY on hot leads

They let unconverted leads languish

They think prospects will call back

They don’t want to be pushy

AND they don’t realize the potential impact follow-up can have on their profits!

While 67% of prospects will be ready to buy within 12 months, 80% will buy within 2 years. Will you still be there when they’re ready to buy?

5 Common follow-up mistakes:

No follow-up at all

Weak follow-up

Irrelevant follow-up

Jumping to a sales pitch

No centralized database

How many touches does it take to close a sale?

2% close on the 1st touch

3% on the 2nd

4% on the 3rd

10% on the 4th touch

81% close on (or after) the 5th touch!!!

When do most companies stop following up?

48% quit on the 1st touch

24% on the 2nd

12% on the 3rd

6% on the 4th

10% quit on the 5th touch

Imagine what would happen if you simply followed up with even 20% more of your leads. Can you see what this would mean to your profits. Remember, there is no additional costs in lead generation, this is merely “harvesting” more of the profits by using follow-up marketing.

Here’s a typical follow-up sequence for new prospects:

Send the info they requested immediately. (email)

Send a letter with more valuable info. (letter)

Call to see if you can answer any questions. (call)

Send a value-added email with tips/education. (email) 

Send a promo offer to stimulate action. (email) 

Follow-up with a limited time promo. (postcard)

Call with a final reminder for promo. (voice broadcast)

Offer subscription to future marketing offers and other value added content. (email)

Of course you can get as creative as you want with your sequences, but the above example should get you started.

Fix Your Follow-Up Failure Plan

Get organized – tag customers and prospects. Segment your data.

Integrate your shopping cart and e-commerce into a follow-up system

Add upsells to the follow-up process

automate process to save human interaction and avoid errors.

Offer free report or other high incentive optin piece

Add an automated affiliate referral program

Fixing Your Follow-Up Failure 

Converts more leads into sales

Gets repeat sales from customers

Grows your business without growing your staff

If you want to learn more about fixing your follow up, I’d encourage you to watch the full video presentation available at the website mentioned below.…

Using Social Media to Connect With Customers – Meet Them on Their Turf

It’s not all fun and games when it comes to social media. The intention of social media, initially, was to bring people together in a social environment, allowing friends and family to associate online in a way that gives everyone the opportunity to communicate. However, this type of environment can do a lot more than just let friends chat with each other. It is also a great vehicle for businesses to connect with people on their own ground. Much like taking a business promotion to the general public, using social media to connect with customers is a great way to bring your business to a place where people feel comfortable.

Your business can have a Facebook page or a Twitter page where you can connect with customers on a friendlier and less professional basis. Using social media to connect with customers also gives you a forum to discuss the latest happenings, offer exclusive deals, and let people get to know your business on a personal level instead of always being professional about your operations. People like to know that they’re understood and appreciated, and social media is a great way for your business to show them just that.

It wasn’t long ago that people started noticing the website addresses on the bottom of every TV commercial, at the end of radio ads, and in other business advertisements and marketing campaigns. Today, it’s not uncommon to see a business promoting their Facebook page or their Twitter account, where anyone can become a fan or follow their business activities. A lot of companies even offer special incentives to people who visit their social media websites. This is a way to drive traffic and get people’s attention, and for now it is working.

If your business is looking for a better way to communicate with customers, It is a great alternative to traditional business marketing and communication. It allows you to get on their level, become a real person to them, and show them how great your business is without them feeling like they are even dealing with a business at all. All the benefits of this have made it a great tool for businesses that are looking to create a better relationship with customers. As time goes on and more people depend on this social outlets, businesses will continue to reap the rewards of using this to connect with customers.…

Are You Making The Right Use Of Marketing Automation Solution?

Marketing automation solution is often looked upon as the panacea to all the sales and marketing woes. To most of the marketers it is like a ‘set it and forget it’ kind of solution that can move the leads swiftly through the sales cycle with no extra effort required. But unfortunately what they don’t realize is that using the solution alone will not suffice. In fact most of the organizations fail to realize the full value of the investment made in marketing technology. The truth is that if you are going to depend solely on an automated tool to nurture your contacts and leads, you are in for some big trouble.

Using barely marketing automation solution to grow contacts list

One major disadvantage of using only an automated solution for the purpose of adding new contacts to your database is that you will run out of people you can direct your marketing efforts to in a while. Generally, email marketing lists keep losing its relevance to some degree with every passing year, retaining on average 75% of the members after each year due to overturn at companies. With people swapping jobs and companies undergoing management changes, the current email addresses no longer remain valid after sometime. As a result you end up having a pretty deflated email marketing list that you cannot rely on to generate leads.

Merging marketing automation solution usage with sales efforts

Marketing automation in itself is not bad. But you need to concentrate on filling the top of your sales funnel by luring and adding net new contacts to your database while optimizing marketing automation efforts simultaneously. Practicing inbound marketing is the best way to achieve your target. You can create interesting and search engine friendly content that addresses your prospects’ needs and queries and use social media to promote that content and extend your reach. Convert the visitors into prospects or leads using proper call-to-action and land pages. They will make up for the 25% of members that you lose to list expiration each year.

Using marketing automation solution in all its complexity

Even if you are focused on growing your email marketing list alongside the automated solution usage, unfortunately, most organization fail to make optimum use of marketing automation solution; barely leveraging the complex features like lead intelligence, contacts’ behavioral traits, etc that can be utilized to plan and craft segmented and personalized marketing campaigns. Rather, they go with a one-size-fits-all approach that results in a series of spam mails that lack targeting. And this is mainly due to dearth of integration between their marketing channels.

Conclusion

Marketing automation solution is a crucial element for every organization to grow market share. If the marketing automation solution, marketing database and marketing analytics tools are properly integrated you can easily segment your communication in the best possible way to address your contacts’ needs and interests. So what you need to do is include technology marketing into your inbound marketing plan in order to be successful. Leveraging marketing automation solution in a comprehensive way is what is required to be precise.…

Article Marketing Automation Review

Article Marketing Automation (AMA) is probably the best tool when it comes to getting a bunch of valuable links to your site and boosting your rankings. After years of experience on the internet and possibly testing all the different kinds of links building I came to the conclusion that nothing comes close to what this system has to offer.

So what it comes down to is the fact that Article Marketing Automation does indeed work and it is certainly the best link building tool available on the internet if you use it correctly.

So what is AMA?Well it is a blog network consisting of over 10 000 blogs where you can submit your article, choose your category and your article will then be distributed to the other blogs in the network. These 10 000 blogs are also targeted to your niche as you can choose the categories where your article should be posted.

You can also get other people to submit their content on your site. All you do is enter your blog’s details, choose your category and then you will get content on a daily basis, which you can approve or reject.

But what makes AMA unique?The anchor text is placed in the content and not in a resource box below the article. So that means that you will get a much better click through rate on your articles.

You can send your articles to all the sites in the network. In the old days you would send one article to hundreds of article directories and hope for a lot of back links to your site. But the problem with this is, because of the duplicate content, most of them will fall under Google’s supplemental index so that means only one or two links will actually count. But when you do it via article marketing automation then every link will count as a valuable link as you will get your article published on a site that is relevant to the theme of your site.

The articles are also distributed over time so it looks much more natural to the search engines.

Now for the resultsIn only four months of using the AMA system I’ve seen much more traffic coming into my sites and I already have first page rankings for almost every niche that I enter. And all this has been achieved by using AMA and some other techniques where I basically just build more value to the links that’s coming in from the AMA system. With one of the niches I entered I had 3 results on Google US for my main keyword and that’s only one of the keywords. So this proves that this system works!

So should you sign up for article marketing automation? Most definitely yes! If you don’t then you are probably missing out on the most effective link building tool on the internet.…

Free and Affordable Ways to Market Yourself Or Your Business

In these tough economic times, many people and businesses know they need to market to get visibility that leads to sales, but have little or no extra capital to do so. However, there are many ways one can market themselves or their business with little or no money. Here are some proven effective marketing strategies for people and businesses with little or no money to spend.

1. Create a website: A website will allow you do tell the world about yourself and what you do. There are many services that allow you to build your own website with easy to follow instructions. Therefore you don’t have to worry about the cost of hiring a website developer to build your site. The most important thing is you want to get as many people to know about you and what you do as possible. Having a website will allow you to share yourself and what you do with others, getting the word out.

2. Develop Strategic Relationships: In building strategic relationships, you create referrals, and referrals mean business. You can join and attend organizations, clubs and associations that share your interest. For example: if you are a realtor you can join the Financial Planners Association, where there are so many professionals that come into contact with people that need to sell or buy real estate. You can create relationships, where you agree to refer clients that need financial advice in exchange for referrals of people that need to sell or buy real estate.

3. Create a unique style or logo: You want to allow people to easily identify you as being different and unique from the competition. Every successful business has a logo, from Microsoft with its four colored window representing its famous operation system windows. You want to create a logo that represents what you do in an image.

4. Write Articles or Newsletters: Write articles or newsletters relating to what it is you do. For example, if you are a wedding planner, you can write an article: How to have a superb wedding on a limited budget. You can add your contact information, your website address and the services you offer generating potential leads.

5. Become a Speaker: Many non-profits, universities, organizations, associations and other entities are always looking for people that can offer knowledge and expertise in many different areas to their members. For example, is you provide senior care, you can contact your local senior citizens center and arrange to discuss what to look for in choosing a senior care provider.

6. Get Social with Online Social Networks: There are many free social networks that allow you to connect with others who share your interest and together you can achieve your goals. You can create a profile or business page for free. For example is you are a florist you can connect with wedding planners which could lead to potential sales, or if you are a drummer looking for bands to play with you can join music groups on social networks and post an ad looking for others in your area to play with.

7. Create a blog: Blogs are free, you just need to write interesting topics that are helpful to the group you are targeting. The more you write the more popular your blog becomes, you can also post comments on other leading blogs.

I hope these marketing strategies will help you in making you and your business a great success.

Do you have a business goal or dream? Do you lack the capital, the connections or all the skills required to achieve it? Then you need to visit: it’s Free to join and you can be that much closer to achieving your dream today!…

How to Become a Really Smart Marketer

Have you ever heard anyone say, “We’re so lucky, we never have to do any marketing and the business keeps coming in”?

We did, and 3 months ago, they told us they had had their worst year ever. The number of businesses who rely on customers picking up the phone themselves or just relying on word of mouth is astounding. If you think like that, not only are you leaving fortunes on the table but you are putting yourself in a very vulnerable position.

The trouble is that when someone says “You need to do some marketing,” some people imagine that suddenly an enormous amount of their profit is going to disappear overnight. They start thinking:

“Who exactly am I going to market to?”

“What am I going to say?”

“Who will do it for me?”

We imagine all the horrors associated with hiring a marketing agency that is then going to eat up our budget with fancy artwork and branding ideas. If you insist on hiring an agency, then so be it, but please make sure that they talk to you in terms of ROI (return on investment). If they can’t guarantee their work, then you should be asking them why not. Too many times we see advertisements which essentially have the message “Look at me! I have a business; phone me if you like.” That may seem harsh, but you just look through any business to business magazine for examples of the worst offenders.

So what is Smart Marketing?

It’s marketing where you OFFER something to your customers rather than simply announcing your existence.

It’s also marketing where you start with your existing customers.

It’s also marketing that does not involve a huge amount of expense.

You will have already heard me say that we leave a great deal of hidden money with our customers by not following up with them enough.

Try this with your existing customers:

Send them a sales letter with an offer to buy something from you that is extra to what they would normally buy. It might be a new product or service or an exceptional offer on your usual product or service for a limited time frame.

The letter should have the following:

1 – An attention-grabbing headline which gets them to read on

2 – The offer and the reason why the offer exists in the form of a story

3 – A deadline by which they need to respond

4 – Instructions on what they need to do next

This is direct response marketing that is inexpensive, measurable, and sent to people who already like buying from you.…

The Business Marketing Know-How

As with anything that deals with business, having a successful marketing plan is a very challenging task. It requires careful planning, deliberate application, and evaluation of the entire process. Although some may prove to be lucky and succeed during the first trial, most often, effective business marketing requires experience and training.

Perhaps one of the most effective marketing techniques is increasing the exposure of the business. Most people rely on the World Wide Web as a resource in looking for what options there are in the market. In that regard, here are a few ideas to consider before making a marketing plan.

– Online listings. Like yellow pages, making your website visible over the internet is a great way of kicking off your marketing plan. Most people these days opt to check online for businesses that cater to their services. Taking your business online, whether big or small, can provide good exposure for potential customers to see. There are now free online services offering a safe way of giving your contact information. In fact, there are some which allows businesses to transact online.

– Establishment Structure. The structure of the business establishment greatly affects how customers view the company. Seeing how the owner cares for the looks and appearance of the structure will give the customers an idea on whether the owner is focused and detail-oriented. Here are some of the ideas that can enhance the impression of customers:

– The architecture and design of the establishment is based according to the market it is trying to attract. Like for example, if you are trying to entice a group of teens, seeing a sign for shop front with various bright colors can actually invite them over. However, if the target market is children and the front of the shop shows off a serious vibe, then even parents will not be happy to see their children in such a serious place.

– Furniture in the establishment plays a big role in making the customers comfortable. Keep in mind that if you intend to put up a potentially crowded shop, then you might want to add in more ventilation or air conditioning. Aside from that, chairs never fail to add more convenience and comfort for the customers. Remember that people do not want to line up for long. Adding furniture or organizing other activities that could keep them busy will make their time worthwhile as they wait.

Putting up a business is never easy. On the other hand, being a customer is just as difficult. The bumps on the road during transactions are inevitable and could often lead to misunderstanding and confusion. While business marketing is the core in attracting customers, it is important that tycoons know their limits. Getting loyal clients is one of the main goals in meeting the success of the establishment. This does not involve giving out false and misleading infomercials. Rather, it is all about the services and the products the business is offering. The quality that is offered should be the main focal point of business marketing.…