Marketing

Advanced Methods for Achieving Affiliate Marketing Success

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Becoming a member of a reputable affiliate marketing program is your signal to start developing campaigns on how to get potential buyers. Use these strategies to improve your marketing campaign and earn higher commissions.

Develop an effective email marketing list. Collect your customers’ email addresses when they place an order, and then follow up by asking them for a review of your product. After this, you can send more emails about additional products on your page. These products should be ones that could interest them based on their previous purchases. Always invite your customers to contact you in return with questions, concerns or suggestions. Responding to customer emails should be a priority. Creating a distribution list and sending newsletters is a less personal, but more practical, option that allows you to reach your clients all at once. Newsletters are an effective way to communicate updates on your products, and relevant news on your business. It’s very important that you write about topics that will catch your target audience’s interest. The readers should be getting some new knowledge from your newsletter. You can include information about specials, and perhaps how you have fixed any problems they may have had.

Customize programs so that they are the best for your business and your target customer base. Every customer has their own perspective, and not all will respond to communication the same. Customers might prefer emails instead of social media or vice versa. Pay close attention to what other companies with your target demographic are doing. Take your competition into consideration when you are trying to keep an edge. Research their business from a consumer’s perspective. You should always be on the lookout for new approaches to increase your advertising success.

Affiliate marketing requires you to constantly change your strategy while keeping in mind what your customers are looking for. Get yourself set up and running, but then be sure to give weight to input from your clientele. Be sure to listen to feedback, as well, and then implement the suggestions made. This process boosts your reputation and entices new customers, as well as maintaining the loyalty of your established clientele.

Advanced Strategies for Taking Affiliate Marketing to New Heights

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There are many things you need to do successfully to improve your affiliate marketing strategies. There are several steps you will need to take to do this. This article provides advanced marketing techniques, including email marketing and making your site more user friendly.

Email marketing can be a great business partner. Each time you encounter a customer, ask them if they’d like to sign up for your newsletter and emailing list. Also, make a new page that allows visitors to sign up. You do not need a lot of their personal data. Let your customers know you will be sending out useful information, as well discounts, in your emails. Be sure to send out content on a regular basis and to use interesting titles in your emails. Use email software that adds the person’s name to the subject line; this measurably increases open rates. Your email should contain content that you have posted in your website, as well as links to your updated pages. Another key addition to emails is information on any sales or offers you have available to your customers. If you make some bargains subscriber-only, you can advertise to people that your email list is a valuable thing to participate in. Stay in contact with your customer base via emails. While you should use emails to promote new products or offers, you should also use them to thank customers for every purchase.

Taylor your marketing program to your target audience. Every customer has their own perspective, and not all will respond to communication the same. Choose a method your customers are comfortable with. There are many ways you can gain insight into customer preferences, including surveys and A/B market tests. Research the strategies your competition uses by visiting their sites as a customer. Finding the best method for your business and customers might require trying a few different approaches.

It is crucial that you are aware of the wants and needs of your potential customer base if you want to succeed with affiliate marketing. You can’t be afraid to take some risks. Once established, you can cultivate your business by maintaining close contact with existing customers and constantly seeking out new ones. Affiliate marketing can used very effectively, if you follow some of the handy hints explained here.

Advanced Approaches to Successful Affiliate Marketing

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Advanced Approaches to Successful Affiliate Marketing

Are you ready to truly develop excellent affiliate marketing skills and stratagems? After you determine which program works best for you, you should have no problem attracting your target market. Soon you will be able to connect with broader, more diverse groups. This article will teach you some methods to make connections with your targeted audience. You will be better able to meet your customer’s needs by using email to market your products.

Email can be a great way to advertise your business. When you sell a product to your customers, be sure to give them the option of being added to your email list. An email address and their name is the grand total that you need, so make it super simple for them to provide this to you. However, once you do have your client’s details make sure you treat them with respect and don’t abuse them. You can utilize different programs that will make sending out mass emails quite easy. Send out a mass mailing when you are gearing up for a sale, and don’t forget to link to your latest article or blog when you do. To sweeten the deal for potential email subscribers, put up a notice that email subscribers will receive additional promotional offers. Show your appreciation by sending a thank you note to customers who have made a purchase.

Taylor your marketing program to your target audience. Think of them as individuals. While certain customers may be more inclined toward using social media for communication, others might prefer a timely newsletter. Use customer demographics, surveys or test marketing strategies to identify the types of interaction that are preferred. Research the strategies your competition uses by visiting their sites as a customer. Try a variety of approaches to determine which ones your customers seem to prefer. When implementing different methods, strive to choose the ones that are the most appropriate for the nature of your product or service.

Be creative with your affiliate marketing efforts. Once you get established, stay in touch with current customers and find ways to obtain new customers. These are great strategies to think about as you come up with your own personal methods as well.

Services Offered

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After you have your clients and have done the competition analysis its time to decide what services you are going to offer your clients. The next couple of training will cover some of the most common offline marketing services you can offer. However there are general principles that need to be taken into consideration when deciding what services you offer clients. This training will help you determine the services that best fit your potential clients.

Business Needs

When determining what services to offer business owners they must first have a genuine need or desire for the service. Most businesses have a poor internet marketing strategy therefore they will likely need whatever services you offer. However, for example, if a business already has a nice mobile optimized website there is no need for you to offer a redesign. If a business has a genuine need and/or desire for your services then it will be an easy sale.

The question then becomes how to determine if a business has a need for a particular service. The easiest way is to find a pain point the business has in their online marketing strategy. That pain point will usually be the reason why a business is missing out on new leads. When you can clearly show that a business is losing money and how your services can help, then you have established a need. Another great way to find a pain point is to find an aspect of the businesses marketing strategy that is incomplete.  A great example of this is with video marketing. Businesses will start a YouTube account and create a couple of videos, however these videos don’t bring in legitimate leads. Knowing this you can offer the business an improved video marketing strategy.

Value

Another important aspects to consider when determining what a service to offer a business owner is the value your services bring to their business. The easiest way to establish the value your services add to a business can be determined by new leads. Showing the number of new leads from different online marketing efforts can reasonable expect to deliver will help show value. Also remember that the value your services add must outweigh the cost of your services. Therefore if you are providing PPC leads, the cost of the clicks mustn’t outweigh the value of new customers.

Your Services

Now that you know how to find what services best fit a business, you must determine what services you want to offer. Much like picking a specific niche to focus on, I recommend picking a limited number of services to offer. By focusing on a limited number of services you will be able to develop a process for implementing you services. This helps not only makes it easier to track your efforts but it also makes your business scalable.

The main service that you offer can be anything from website design to monthly SEO services. You simply have to choose the online marketing method that you are most comfortable with and have the most experience with. Your main service will be what drives your business so spend the appropriate amount of time determining what your main service will be. The training following today’s will show how to properly implement multiple services so you will have an idea of what works best for you.

Track Your Efforts

Like most aspects of running your own successful business you must be able to track your marketing efforts. You have to track everything you do on two fronts:

  • You have to track the work you are doing
  • Track the value that you are adding to a business

Tracking the work that you are doing is very important. At anytime you must be able to show the work you’ve done on a particular campaign. Without this information you are shooting yourself in the foot. Knowing the exact amount of time spent on a campaign, results of a particular strategy, what was done on a campaign will help in the long run. At some point you will get clients that are dissatisfied with your services and you will need crucial information like this to help determine what the issues of the particular campaign.

The second part to tracking your services is determining the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. The easiest way to do this is by tracking the number of leads your services have provided to the business.  When you know the number of leads you provided you can then reasonable estimate the value of the leads to the business. This is not just for the benefit of your clients, this can also be of great benefit to your offline business as well. Tracking your marketing efforts allows you to split test different aspects of your marketing campaign. You will be able to find what works best and constantly improve your marketing efforts and delivering even more value

What’s Next

Now it is time to start thinking about what services you want to offer businesses. Narrow down your expertise to one particular service that you can offer at premium prices. Make sure that business have a genuine need and/or desire for your marketing service. Focus on providing value to the businesses you work, which usually comes in the form of new leads. Finally be sure to track all of your marketing efforts. This will help you not only you grow you business but you will also start to provide better service.

 

Competition Analysis

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Now you have successfully signed a new client for your offline marketing services. The first step to starting a new campaign is the competition analysis. The big secret about SEO, PPC, Video Marketing or any service that you offer is that you only have to be better than the competition. That’s it, you don’t have to create ads that convert at 30% or have the best SEO in the world you only have to beat local competitors.  This training will help you through your competition analysis.

This training is relies on a lot of tools. Most of the information can be found out using free alternatives however to get the most accurate and up to date information it is worth investing in the tools mentioned. Also all of the tools mentioned come with some type of free trial take advantage of them for free while you get new clients!

Competition

To begin I will assume that you have already done your keyword research. If so then you are ready to begin some general competition analysis. For starters it’s important for you to identify the top online competition for your clients. There is a distinct difference between your client’s physical competition and online competition. You have to find the competitors in your client’s area that are dominating the internet. It will typically consist of 2-5 different companies depending on the area.

To do this we will be using the online marketing tool  Semrush. This is an online tool that shows ranking and PPC analysis based off websites and/or keywords you enter. With this one tool you can find out valuable information about the top ranking websites for your client’s top keywords. Visit the tools website and simply enter some of your primary keywords, you will start to notice the same sites appearing regularly. These are your client’s online competition. You simply need to record these top online competitors so you can further analyze their online strategies.

Backlink Analysis

The next step in your competition research will consist of Backlink Analysis. Here you will find the sources that your competitors are using to achieve high rankings. For your backliink analysis you can use SEOMoz Opensite Explorer. This is an excellent tool for you to quickly and easily find what type of backlinks your client’s offline competition is using. You can get an exclusive 90 day free trail of the tool. You also get membership access where you can speak with other SEO’s and learn more about latest Google trends.

When doing your backlink analysis you will be looking for the overall link building strategy the competition has used to achieve high rankings. Some things you can look for include:

  • Link building strategy
  • Backlink sources
  • Anchor text used
  • Top backlink sources (news sites, guess post other prominent sites etc.)

Once you have a general sense of your competitors top backlink sources you can begin to get equivalent backlinks for your clients. Since your competitors websites’ are ranking well for ideal keywords then you can assume that getting similar backlinks will help your clients site rank too.

Social Media Analysis

With the last Google updates, Google has made it clear that a high value is placed on social signals. With that in mind you have to find out what your top competitors are doing on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Google+ and YouTube. You need to get a general sense of what they are doing on these networks and how to generate user engagement. If you can clearly define and understand how competitors leverage social media to benefit rankings (and bottom line) then you can begin to implement similar strategies for you clients.

PPC Analysis

The last step for any strong competition analysis is discovering your competition’s PPC campaigns. This will be beneficial even if you don’t offer PPC as one of your services. For the part of the competition analysis you will need to use another online marketing tool and that is Keyword Spy. With this tool you will be able to see the exact PPC ads competitors were using and how effective they were. With this type of information you can quickly develop your own PPC campaign using the ads that are PROVEN to work.

What if you don’t offer pay per click services how can a PPC analysis help you? Well PPC rely heavily on the copy that used to attract readers and take some sort of action. With a quick analysis of your competitor’s ads you can see the wording that prompted user to take action and apply it to your clients site. This alone can greatly increase click through rates and new leads for you clients.

What’s Next

Take the information within this training and start applying it to some of the competitor in your area. You can use a good competition analysis even if you don’t have any clients. A good competition analysis can be the valued added proposition you offer prospect when you meet with them! Be sure to include every section covered in this training and develop the best competition analysis possible. Finally remember to use the tools mentioned as well to get the most accurate and useful information possible for your analysis.

Setting Your Meetings Final Close

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At this point you have contacted your prospects and they have now become leads. 97% of the time you will not be able to sell your services during the initial contact with you prospects. Therefore I prefer to schedule another appointment to close new clients. The location depends; initial I only worked with offline clients within a relatively close radius so I could do meeting in person. However as my business grew and I began expanding my offline business I started to close clients over the phone as well. Both are viable options its just a matter of how aggressive you want to be in closing leads.

How to Prepare

Now that you’ve made appointments it’s time for you to begin preparing for your meeting. First be sure to follow up with the business owner sometime before to confirm your appointment. Once you start to prepare for a meeting you need to get yourself in the right mindset. Personally I am naturally a very confident person so it doesn’t take much for me. Regardless if you are confident or not, you MUST be confident in your abilities. You are the expert and have probably invested years and thousands of dollars investing in your skills, so have confidence in the services you have to offer.

Next you need to do some more in depth research on your leads. You should have some basic information about the business from your prospecting stage, now its time to take it up a notch. The amount and type of research you do depends on what services you are offering. But some basic research that you can include are things like: competition analysis, website analysis, keyword research etc. You can also include any information about additional services you may offer i.e. mobile search per month, video rankings or social media errors.

Once you have completed client research you should prepare a nice document which the client can review while you presenting. When I’m meeting with a new client I like to bring the following things

  • Client questionnaire
  • Professional information packet
  • Any contracts needed
  • Ipad or Netbook Laptop

The Meeting

When you start the meeting with a prospect the best thing to do is start building some rapport. When it comes to your offline business and managing clients rapport is your secret weapon. Rapport building starts with this first face to face meeting and continues throughout the entire time you provide offline services. Here are some great questions to ask to start building rapport during your first meeting:

  1. Tell me about your business
  2. How long have you have you had it
  3. So what did you do before starting this? How did you like it? Etc. (this line of questioning just helps build some personal rapport between you and the business owners)
  4. What are you goals for your business
  5. What are the biggest problem you have with you marketing efforts
  6. What are some areas of your web marketing that you would like to see improvements in your marketing
  7. When it comes to investing in new marketing efforts what are some of the criteria that you use

This line of questioning will help you build instant rapport with any business owner. You want to get the business owners talking about themselves, in so doing this will make the business owner like you!

After your initial rapport building line of questioning it is time for you to present your information. The information you present should be specifically created for that business and show how you can help their business. This also shows that you are an expert in the field of internet marketing. You can find lots of templates to use when presenting certain services to business owners within the Warrior Forum.

Close

Before you begin to sell its important to note that you should NOT be selling your services instead sell what your services can do for the business. With that in mind there is a very effective way to close the business owners. This method is known as the “logic close.” This means that after you have presented all of the information it’s simply a forgone conclusion that the business owner will purchase your services. You simply have to present the solutions from your presentation with some of the problems the business outlined earlier.

Personally I like to do this in the form of MORE QUESTIONS. For example when offering my SEO services I will go lead into my close the following way.

“John based off the information you told me it sounds like:

  1. You are the type of business owner that wants to get more leads on a consistent basis for your business, right?
  2. Your business could also benefit from increased customer loyalty, correct?
  3. Finally you want to stop wasting money on ineffective marketing and increase ROI, right?

“Well great John then it sounds like you would be interested in our Premium SEO services”

What’s Next

That’s it. The local close is simple and effective and what I use every time. Once you have your meeting set up you must prepare for the meeting. Get into the right mindset and have confidence in your services. Before your meeting you will also need to prepare some sales material to help show your product or services. During the meeting remember to build rapport with the business owner right away. Once you’ve developed some rapport simply present your information and move into the close.

Before you begin meeting with clients you should thoroughly practice a sales meeting. Also go through a couple of scenarios with someone just so you can get more acclimated with the process. The more comfortable you are with your sales presentation the more new clients you will close.

 

Results Based Lead Generation

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For this lead generation method you will be providing leads to a local business in order to generate new clients. This method is excellent because you provide the results (new leads) to business owners for free before you even contact them. This shows that your methods are effective. Finally it’s an excellent way to build trust between you and local business and makes for an easy close.

A word of caution here, obvious this lead generation method won’t work for every offline business model. For example if you only want to provide mobile marketing services to local business then it will be difficult to send a business mobile leads. Also this method does require an initial investment of time and money before you get any new clients. However I could easily use this one method to generate enough new leads for my business on an ongoing basis.

How to do it

When I want to start a result based lead generation campaign I use one of two methods. The first method I suggest is creating a lead generation site. This is actually the method that I prefer and use most often. Secondly you can choose to do a simple service that can generate leads easily. With the second (and faster) method it is usually used as a “foot in the door” strategy that you can do for multiple businesses.

Lead generation sites play a large role in my offline business. I offer a full suite of offline marketing services but I started off with SEO. So when I first ventured out on my own I used lead generation sites in two ways:

  1. Test new SEO strategies
  2. Create a new lead generation source for potential offline clients

Basically I would rank a site for a local keyword and then send the leads to prospects in the area that didn’t have good rankings in Google. This was an excellent way to get my services out there.

The second way to do results based lead generation is by doing easy services. For example if you want video marketing to play a large role in your offline marketing services then you can create YouTube channels optimized for local keywords. This may take 2 hours and $15 but over time you will have an excellent source of leads available for local prospects.

Here is another great option for those that want to offer Pay Per Click services. First you will need a Google Adwords Voucher, you can usually get one from your hosting provider. You will then use PPC ads to drive traffic to a basic squeeze page or just forward calls to local businesses. This is a simple way to peek the interest of business owners by getting leads to a brand new site!

Delivering Leads

Once you start getting the leads coming in (no matter the method used) you need to be able to quickly deliver the leads to local prospects. There are lot of different methods that could work but the way I choose to do it is via call tracking. I mentioned that I use CallFire.com for all of my call tracking needs. Well CallFire has an interesting feature called “whisper message.” Basically what this does is whisper a message to let the business owner who delivered the lead.

The process works as follows:

  1. A local consumer finds your lead generation site and calls your call tracking number
  2. Your call tracking number automatically forwards the call to one of your local prospects
  3. Local prospect hears the whisper message “This free lead was provided by XYZ Marketing”
  4. Local prospect get a new customer
  5. After allotted amount of time you warm call local prospect about purchasing your offline marketing services

Now when you contact the business owner it will be a warm call! Over the course of a week you could send 6 free leads to a local business then when you follow up they will know that you were sending them legitimate leads. This is a great way to show how effective your marketing services are. Inform the business owner that you will be forced to start sending the leads to one of their competitors unless they want to start paying for the leads.

What’s Next

First you should decide what type of results based lead generation methods you want to employ. You can choose creating a full lead generation website or simply providing a quick service like video marketing or PPC. You will then need to use some type of call tracking to forward all of the leads to a local prospect. If possible be sure to inform the business owner that your company was responsible for generating the leads. Finally be sure to follow up with the local prospect about permanently purchasing your offline services.

Cold Emailing

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The Basics

Contacting prospects via cold emailing can be an easy way to generate leads for your offline business. If you want this can be the first form of contact between you and all of the prospects that you’ve collected. I use cold emailing as a way to contact business owners daily because it is efficient and with the right swipe file very effective. If you have done your prospecting correctly you should have a large number of business owners contact information including their email.

This is the exact template I use, and it is quite effective. You simply have to adapt it to fit the services you are currently offering.

The Template

Subject Line: Looking for new <business type> in <city name>

Body:

“I live in<city name> and I recently decided I needed a new <business type.> I have done some research and it is clear that you are best choice available I was wondering if I could schedule an appointment….”

Would you like to get more email and submission forms like this form local customers.

As the owner of a local business in <city name> I too know how difficult it can be to generate new business. However we have been able to increase small business leads in your industry by 64% while reducing cost of marketing by 200%. You can find out more by clicking here.

<Your Name>

Business Name

Phone Number

P.S. This link  will only be available for one <business type> in your local area; we are making this information available to all of the <business type> in the area so act fast.

How it Works

Now lets look a little closer into why this email is so effective. With this email we are trying to get the business owner to say a series of micro “yeses” in order to get the Big Yes at the end which is visiting our website.

The subject line to any email is the most important part! Most businesses owners will open this email, because they think its coming from a potential customer. Also there is the settle hint of “new” in the subject line which implies that the person writing the email is looking for this service now.

The opening paragraph is also important because most email service providers will show the beginning of the email next to the subject line when the reader is still previewing the email. Plus when the business owner opens the email the opening paragraph will keep them reading our email.

We then transition and tell the business owner who we are and what we have been able to do for other businesses. Now I know some of you may not have results to put in this section but don’t worry. You can always research and find convincing stats about the effectiveness of mobile marketing, SEO, PPC, or whatever service you provide.

We then have a clickable link which will then take the business owner to your website promoting your offline marketing services. It should be a landing page where the business owner can get free information about the service you provide or watch a compelling video. In an earlier training I recommended you purchase some PLR about offline marketing services.

We then end by providing our contact information. It is imperative that you leave your phone number. You want it to be as easy as possible for a small business owner to contact you. Finally in the P.S., you will use scarcity by informing the business owner that the information is only available for one business.

Now once your email are sent you are done! Give some time for the business owners to respond. I typically wait 24 – 48 hours before following up. I start by contacting all of the leads who tried to contact me either via email, phone call, email submit etc. I will then contact any of the businesses that received the email and didn’t try to contact me via warm calling. If the business owner is not interested just move on, there will be plenty of interest in your services.

What’s Next

You should create a base email marketing template and funnel. Decide what page you want to send your leads too and what your follow up sequence will include. Remember when creating the email you are trying to get a series of small yeses to get the business owner to visit your site. Be sure to remember the purpose of each section of the email. Finally be sure to track your email marketing efforts. You want know when to follow up with the prospect and maybe even split test different aspects of your emails. I typically do this in an excel spreadsheet. You are now ready to begin sending bulk emails to business owners to attract new business.

Auto Calling The Basics

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One of the most effective tools used for businesses is an Auto Dialing Software. Now this isn’t cold calling, this is getting your marketing message to an unlimited number of businesses with very little work. In this training I will show you exactly how to set this up for your business.

Auto Calling gives you the ability to call literary hundreds of business owners at once with auto dialing software. From here you have different options including having someone be redirected back to you live or (and my personal favorite) going through a pre-sales funnel of prerecorded messages. The best part about this is you don’t have to do anything until a prospect wants additional information from you.

Method 1: Instant Sales Call

Let’s walk through the first option of having a prospect call be redirected to you. First you begin by getting the phone numbers of your prospects and inserting them into your auto dialing software. You will then use a prerecorded message prompts the prospect to “press  1” for more information. After which prospects will press 1 and be redirected to your main phone line or simply hang up.

This method is great because prospect that “press 1” immediately become hot leads that is calling you! They want to know more information about the service you provide. Now you can decide if you want to set a meeting with your new lead or sale them your services right on the phone.

The most important part with this method is getting the right prerecorded message, which prompts the business owner to “press 1.” Lets look at a sample script of an effective prerecorded message when using this method:

“Hi, this is <Your Name> with <Business Name> we specialize in getting more leads for <Your Nice>. I have helped increase local leads by 64% while reducing marketing cost by more than 200%. Give me 5 minutes and I can show you how to increase your customers and ROI  I guarantee it. This opportunity is limited to one <Business Type> in the area so press 1 now to speak with me immediately.”

OR….

“Hi, this is <Your Name> I will be delivering 5 free leads to the next <Your Niche> that calls me! Press 1 now to be transferred to me immediately and claim your free leads”

Now both of these are just examples of some script that I have had success with in the past. Feel free to use them yourself or adapt them how you see fit. The most important thing is creating an attract offer which entices the business owner to press 1. You must always be prepared to answer your phone and go immediately into sales mode to either close a meeting or close a new deal!

Method 2: Virtual Sales Funnel

This method I like a little better than the first because you can send each lead through a virtual sales funnel all on autopilot. First you take you list of prospect’s contact information and put it into your auto dialing software. You software calls all of the numbers at one time however you don’t want the prospects to pick up. Instead you want to leave an enticing voicemail. Your voicemail will prompt the business owner to call you back during normal business hours. When the business owner calls you back they will then be sent to a second recording which further explains your services. At the end of the message you will prompt the business owner to leave their contact information. You now have a list of business owners just waiting for you to call and sale your services.

Again the message that you leave the business owners are very important, however at the end of the funnel you again have red how leads ready for your marketing services. Here is an example of the prompts I use when selling mobile sites:

MSG 1: Hi this is <Your Name> I am having some trouble viewing your website, please give me a callback at 123-456-7890

Hint – a good way to ensure you get the business voicemail is to schedule your calls to go out early in the morning (2am – 4am) this way no one will be in the office. However this will not work if you are working in a niche that offers 24 hour services.

(Business owners call back and directed to second prerecorded message)

MSG2: Hi <Your Name> thanks for giving me a call back, sorry I am unavailable at the moment. The reason I called was because I was on my mobile phone and couldn’t view vital information about your business because you website wasn’t compatible. This could be making you miss out on up to 36 new clients per month. So I created a free mockup of how what a new mobile website for you website should look like! If you would like your free mobile website please leave your Name Phone Number and best time to reach you and I will contact as soon as possible. We are only offering a limited number of free websites so please make sure to leave your information.

Thanks!

(Interested business owners will leave their contact information)

What’s Next

Now that you understand the two methods you can start to implement this system into your lead generating methods. Decide which approach works best for you (or split test the two) and create a prerecorded message. A good thing about using this approach is that you can use a larger list of prospects because those not interested will naturally fall out of the funnel. This method is used by some of the biggest companies in the world because it is so effective. You will be getting hot leads that are asking you to sell to them.

Direct Mail The Basics

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Direct mail is a great way to not only get new clients but also scale your business for 20, 30, 50 or even 100 clients! A direct mail campaign that is properly implemented can have the highest success rate when compared to your other lead generation campaigns. The hardest part about direct mail is getting the business owner to open your package. But the contents of your direct mail piece should be engaging enough that business owner will call back. Finally when following up with business owners you can refer to the “correspondences” you sent so you are now warm calling. Direct mail is a great lead generation system and a must for your start up business.

Packaging

The first and most important thing when it comes to your Direct Mail campaign is the packaging. Now there are many different options but the two that work best are Priority Mail Envelopes from USPS.com or Envelopes from Fedex.com. Both are equally effective and will greatly increase the chance of your direct mail piece being opened by a business owner. Typically information that is mailed via Priority Mail or FedEx tends to be important therefor a business owner will surely open it.

Another option that has been getting a lot of attention lately in the world of direct mail is the use of Bank Bags. These are simple bags that you can use to package you direct mail piece. Again the purpose of the packaging is to ensure your marketing piece is read by the business owner. Although this method may be a bit more expensive will it will greatly increase the chances of getting new leads and new clients.

DM Contents

Now that the business owner has opened your direct mail piece you MUST immediately grab their attention. The best way to do this is with $1.oo bill attached to the top of your marketing piece. This is an old direct mail gimmick that makes your report stand out and more memorable when you follow up. The $1.00 bill trick is the only method that I use when sending direct mail pieces.

By now you’ve successfully got the business owner to open your DM piece, you have their attention now its time to get a new lead! This is done with the contents you send to the business owner. Now it depends on the type of services you are selling the particular business, but you can create some type of personalized attractive report showing them their pain. This goes back to knowing your prospect. Simply create a report which shows their pain and how you can help.

For example if you are selling SEO services you can send a report showing the top keywords for an industry and how many leads the top ranking site can expect to get. Another option is for those selling mobile websites. Create a short a short report showing a non-optimized mobile site compared to a mock up site. For both examples you can create a general template and plugin different business information then send the report.

Finally, at end of your report you need to include a definite Call To Action (CTA). This is what makes the difference between sending out free and information and getting new leads. End your report by telling the business owner to call you back so you can talk more about the information you provided. You can also inform the business owner that you will be following up with them within a couple days if you don’t hear a response.

Follow UP

Although DM is very effective in lead generation it still requires some follow up. The two methods I use for follow up is warm calling and/ or sending a “lumpy” mailing. First I say warm call because since we know the business owner will open and read the DM piece we can assume they know we will be following up with them. Therefore the business owner should be expecting our call. My follow up warm call script would go something like this:

You: Hello this is <your name> I’m calling about the correspondence sent to <business owner name> on <insert date>

Sectary: Ok I will get him for you

….

Owner: Hello this is John, who am I speaking with?

You: Hey John this is <your name> I’m just calling about the report we sent you on <insert date>

The one with the $1 attached…

Owner: Oh yes I remember that, I looked it over and…

 

Now proceed to cover the report answer any question the business owner may have and set a meeting!

Numerous deals have been closed because of a warm call follow up. Most business owners want to call you back especially if you do a good job of showing how you can help them. However they are busy, so you must follow up.

Finally if you are still having trouble getting in contact with a business owner, I will follow up by sending some “lumpy” mail. These are just little items used to get the business owners attention and let them know that you are serious about helping their business grow. A good example of a lumpy mail follow up I often use is Shredded Money. I will add the line “your website costing you money” or “stop wasting money on ineffective adverting!” Of course after the lumpy mail is sent I will follow up with another warm call.

What’s Next

Before going out and investing in postage or direct mail pieces I would suggest visiting the warrior forum and finding a more detailed course about direct mail. You will be able to find a more complete step by step guide and templates to use for your direct mail efforts.

Find a good template that works for you. Direct mail does take an initial investment compared to other lead generation strategies, but as I stated before it is also one of the best. I would recommend starting off by mailing 20 of your top prospects. Most importantly be sure to follow up with each of these clients. Even If you close one new client from direct mail you will easily cover all of your initial expenses. Simply continue to repeat, improve and scale your DM process until you have reached the desired number of clients!

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