Tag Archive for: targets to prospects

Marketing plans aren’t rocket science

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We’re delighted to welcome another guest blogger to the Being Smarter stable. Maria Sadler runs The Small Marketing Company and has set herself up (quite uniquely) as a Social Media manager for people who know they should… but don’t have the time.

Maria’s first thoughts for Being Smarter are below…

You don’t need to throw large sums of money at advertising and PR to get started you just need to be a bit savvy. So here are some tips to get you started.

1) Think about your targets first

This may sound obvious but if you start to really hone in on who your ideal customer is, you can start to identify where they ‘hang out’. For example if your business benefits mothers with school age children you could target PTAs and school newsletters. If your business or service would be of interest to local businesses, check out the local Chamber of Commerce and local networking groups.

Now you know who your targets are and where you might find them, you need to consider how to attract their attention. If you are targeting a busy professional who will no doubt receive countless emails per day you need to grab their attention fast by being brief, different and a little intriguing.

These are probably the ideal people to send an eye catching but short email – Targets to Prospects software is perfect for this – or consider approaching them via Twitter, where you get 140 characters to grab attention.

2) Now think about your message

Once you understand your customer, you can then start to craft your message to make sure you get their attention. Work out what problems and issues they face and then think how your product or service could help resolve them. You may be desperate to tell them about a great new feature of your product but guess what, your potential customer won’t care.

Try the ‘so what’ test. So what benefit does that feature give the customer, focus on the feature that gives the greatest benefits, and think about the problems your customer has that you can alleviate.

3) Differentiate yourself from the competition

Whilst price is always a factor, at the moment is isn’t always the decider. So you need to determine what is different/better about your service above the competition. Here is one of the places that being ‘visible’ and something of an authority on a subject can be of great advantage, and this is where an online presence comes in.

Think about when you are looking for a product or service – what is the first thing you do? If you are like most people, you will go to Google and do a search for the type of product or service you need. If your name or company name keeps appearing on websites, blogs, articles, Twitter and other social media, discussing that very thing – the potential customer will begin to believe in your credibility.

4) Get your customers to blow your trumpet

Once you start to sell your product or service, ask your customers if they could give you feedback – you can then start to use this on your marketing materials as proof that you deliver. This will also become a very useful source of information on how you can improve your product in the future and what new products you could add to expand your offering. Finally it shows your customers that you care about what they think, and want to provide the best customer service.

Maria Sadler runs The Small Marketing Company which specialises in online marketing using Social Media. Follow her at www.twitter.com/mfsadler

How to get noticed

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OK – so it’s a day later than planned – the final part of my “5 days with Ed Dale”, founder of the Thirty Day Challenge. If you’ve missed the first three, you can see the intro here, How to do business in 2010 here and 3 golden rules to creating content here.

It was an inspiring few days with Ed and his team which I’ve enjoyed writing about. Today, however, seeing as a few people came to ask me during the event we were recording how I managed to persuade him to work with us, I thought I’d do my final article on how to get noticed… or more specifically, how we got noticed.

I’ve not had a great deal of experience of getting noticed in the B2C space, however I have spent the last 10 years or so working in the business to business environment, and believe me, it’s not an easy thing to do. Attempting to create new relationships with Directors of Marketing or HR in large corporates is difficult to say the least. Inboxes are crowded places, cold calls aren’t exactly the way forward, and snail mail will almost certainly end up lost in some strange basement post room.

So – how did I get Ed’s attention? What are my tips for getting noticed by your Targets?

Know your Targets

You are looking for new customers – you have to know who they are first. Remember, one size doesn’t fit all. You have to niche it down. If you are selling a service with mass appeal, focus on one niche at a time. Figure out 100 targets and then get to know them before approaching them…

Legal stalking

Do some basic searches on your Targets… find out all about them. Use Gist as a great tool to data mine and cross reference. If you can’t find anything on them, get to understand their company instead. People so often ask my why I bother with Twitter. Legal stalking is my answer – follow those of your targets who have a Twitter stream. Get to understand what makes them tick, so that when you finally come to approach them you can be personal and relevant. The key words in this whole article.

Email marketing is dead in the water

Broad brush, blanket, call it what you will, email marketing does not work when you are looking to target new customers. Sure, it’s fine to maintain a relationship (although I’d still question that) however you are never going to get noticed with an html newsletter. How many do you delete on a daily basis?

Get noticed

So – my personal favourite tack is to write a short, punchy email – question every single word within it to see if it is relevant and adds value to the approach. Make sure your target knows that this is not a cut and paste email. Write something personal in it… “I noticed you were interested in chocolate tea pots…” etc. Make it easy to read – and don’t send it straight away. Send it the next day. As the Lynx advert rightly says, you’ve only one chance to make a first impression.

Now comes the clever bit

I’ve been developing and refining a system for the last 8 years and have shown beyond reasonable doubt that the more personal you get, the higher the chance of a response. At the end of your email, refer your target to a URL, and do not make it your company URL – again, that’s not personal enough – if they liked you, they’d look it up anyway. Instead, make the URL personal. ie www.chocolateteapotsdemo.com/richard-fox.

That’s right – a URL with their name in it… put your mind in your Target’s shoes… they open the email, see the link and think  “Huh – they’ve done something for me? wow – I’m intrigued – I’ll take a look.”

Think about it – you’d click the link wouldn’t you?

Get them engaged

So they click the link – and you’re thinking it’s just a redirect to the main website? Wrong. Big mistake, I’ve tried that too. Instead, that link needs to go to a page which is personal to them. A page which carries on the conversation and then tells your story. Typically in a short video format. Here’s an example of one we use… (imagine this at the bottom of your email).

http://845tv.com/vip/richard-fox/

The feedback loop

You then need to know if / when they clicked the link so that you can follow up, or if you do it well – so that you can predict when they might respond to you.

How to automate this process

Having used this technique for a while now, I started to get my targets asking whether they could  buy the system.  My first answer was no, but now it’s yes…. Targets to Prospects is now born and in 30 seconds, you can create a personal page and personal link for your target. This is the exact technique I used to get Ed’s attention. This is what he said to me once we’d started to work together…

“I get dozens of approaches on a weekly basis and 99% of them tend to get ignored. I noticed Mark’s email to me, because it was personal. The link with my name in stood out from the rest of the crowd, and the page it landed on hooked me in, due to the excellent video story… As a result, I’m now looking forward to working with him over the coming months.”

He is a busy man to say the least. No one was more shocked than me when I got a response from him in 12 hours. I created cut through, because the communication was personal and relevant.

Tell me more

To see a full demo and details of how to buy a system for your choice of domain, you can check out Targets to Prospects here.

A big thank you

To Ed for a cracking few days and for the quote above. I learnt a load and am looking forward to bringing together his expertise in 8.45 Club style courses over the coming months.