In Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent book Blink, he shows the ability – also well demonstrated in his hit book The Tipping Point – to pull together facts and data and present them as an interesting story, while leading you towards a conclusion about what all these facts mean.
Blink, says Gladwell, is “a book about the first two seconds.“
Those first two seconds are important whether you are a gallery curator faced with deciding if a newly-discovered work of art is a fake or if you are a police officer who thinks somebody might be reaching for a gun. (The book details examples of both, with tragic consequences in the latter case.)
But the first two seconds are important for all of us – whether we are deciding if we should trust someone, have a date with them, or buy from them.
Here are three points that particularly grabbed my attention from the book:
The first two seconds and judging others
Gladwell tells a few stories of situations where people were asked to make assessments of others based on short video clips.
One interesting case was looking at surgeons who were the subject of malpractice cases.
The research showed that people don’t sue doctors because they’ve had bad medical care.
People don’t sue surgeons they like. They sue surgeons who haven’t shown them respect.
Surgeons who had never been sued spent on average three minutes longer with patients than those who were the subject of legal action – 18 minutes compared to 15 minutes.
That in itself is interesting but what’s even more interesting is that other people could identify the surgeons most likely to be sued by watching a short content-free video clip of their consultations.
The factor that had the biggest impact in categorizing them was their tone of voice.
Those doctors whose tone of voice was felt to be too dominant were usually correctly identified as being in the sued group.
So its true that how you speak is often more important than what you say.
The first two seconds and making purchase decisions
An experiment was tried in the gourmet jam booth of an upmarket grocery store. Some days, six different jams were displayed – other days 24. You might think people would prefer the wider choice as they would find something to suit their exact needs.
However, here’s the difference:
When there were 24 choices, 3% of passers-by bought something.
When there were 6 choices, 30% bought.
Jam purchase is a snap decision. So having too many choices makes the decision difficult and your mind becomes confused.
So a bit of choice is usually good. Too much choice is often bad.
Driving your own mood
Psychologist Paul Ekman and his collaborator Wallace Friesen identified every distinct muscular movement the face can make. They identified 43 such movements, which they called ‘action units’ and they became expert at reproducing them all.
While this work has been used in many ways, one of their most interesting findings was that, after creating facial expressions relating to feeling bad, they started to feel bad.
In further research, they showed conclusively that just creating the facial expressions of feeling bad made people feel bad and show the same physiological responses as people who have a real reason to feel bad.
In the book Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz talks about the same concept.
In a similar piece of work, German scientists asked people to look at cartoons while holding a pen in their mouth.
If the pen is held between your lips, it’s impossible to smile. If the pen is held between your teeth, you are forced to smile.
The people who held the pen between their teeth found the cartoons much funnier.
So if emotion can start on the face, and you want to make a good impression on others quickly, it’s best to start with a smile!
When you have used effective promotion strategies to get people to come to your website and give you their contact details, you have the chance to turn prospects into ideal clients.
Just as in personal relationships, you need to give someone time to get to know you and decide whether you are compatible. In business, you need to take time to demonstrate that you can help them.
Building effective relationships with prospects and customers generally happens in stages:
Know: Tell them about yourself and what you can do for them.
Trust: Build confidence by demonstrating the value you can offer.
Try: Make it easy for them to sample your expertise – either free or at low cost.
Commit: Encourage them to stay longer and buy more.
The exact process of relationship building will depend on your market and people will take varying lengths of time at each stage.
The 6 Keys to Building Profitable Relationships to Turn Prospects Into Ideal Clients
The process of turning prospects into ideal clients usually involves the following key elements.
Start immediately
Sell quickly
Stay in touch
Satisfy your clients
Segment your audience
Step up your offers
Start Immediately
Many people make the mistake of collecting email addresses and thinking the free report they offer is enough to create a relationship.
Send out communication as soon as someone joins your list
In your personal life, if someone asks for your contact details, and then never calls, you may be initially disappointed but you will probably forget them quickly.
Similarly, to establish a business relationship, you need to follow up the contact right away and with enthusiasm.
You only have a short time to show this person you can make a difference in their life.
That means you need to have a communication program set up as soon as someone joins your list. The key aims of this are to show them what you can do, how it can help them, and why they should trust you.
“You only have a short time to show this person you can make a difference in their life.”
It can be done with a series of emails set up to go out at specified intervals in the first few weeks – backed up by additional material sent as physical mail where possible.
Sell Quickly
When it comes to building trust, there is a fine balance between trying to sell too quickly and waiting too long.
Nobody likes to be subjected to pushy sales messages right from the start. However:
The last thing you want is a mailing list made up of freebie-seekers who will never spend any money.
Bear in mind that people who join your list are likely to have done so because they have a problem they want to solve. They want a solution to that problem.
Not all of them are ready to pay for a solution yet but many are ready to hear about what you can do for them.
Part of the task of developing relationships is building trust. Often this is done by sharing valuable information.
Generally, you want to start as soon as possible introducing ways that people can try out what you offer and you want to get them used to the idea of paying for it.
That means you should be able to quickly make offers at relatively lower price points where they can try you out. That price point may be $7 or it could be $197, for example, depending on what you offer.
Typically, the actual price point doesn’t matter too much in determining whether someone will turn into a long-term customer.
The key is that:
People who have bought something from you are more likely to buy more; so you want to turn people into buyers as quickly as possible.
One of the keys to that is making sure that you make offers to people and that you are specific about what you want them to do.
But you can do that in a framework of sharing valuable information.
In other words, give good information but be specific about how people can get further help by investing with you – even if it’s a relatively small amount.
Stay in Touch
There are many different elements in building the relationship – depending on the type of product or service you offer – but email is a particularly effective communication tool.
Here are some key points:
There are many different elements in building a relationship
Planned: You need to put in place a series of pre-planned messages to go out to new email subscribers to let them get to know you. The first 30 days are especially vital.
Practical: You should be giving people information they can use and that they find valuable. Your aim is first to build trust before you try to take the relationship further.
Persistent: You need an ongoing program of messages and the contact needs to be regular. You shouldn’t mail three times in one week and then nothing for a month. A regular ezine or newsletter can be very effective for doing this.
Personal: For email to help build a relationship, it should have a personal touch. Use friendly language – as if you were writing to someone you know well – and be ready to share a bit of yourself.
Purposeful: Each email should have a specific aim – it might be to build trust, to share information, or – later in the process – to ask for the sale. In the long run, your aim is usually to make money, so don’t be afraid to sell – when the time is right and with an effective message.
Satisfy Your Clients
The long-term success of the relationship will depend on how successful you are at giving people what they want.
Immediate delivery: Make sure you communicate with people quickly and deliver what they have requested – even if it is free.
Follow-up service: The quality of the relationship will often hinge on how well you respond to questions and problems. Even complaints turn into valued relationships when handled well.
Exceed expectations: You don’t build relationships by giving people what they expect. That won’t make them stay. You need to give them an experience that goes beyond what they expect so that they have no temptation to go anywhere else.
Segment Your Audience
Although the most effective communication is personal, you won’t always be able to talk with your clients and prospects one-on-one.
Target your messages to specific groups.
However, you don’t want to have one message for all. So you can use the information you have about people to ensure your message and offers are targeted to specific groups.
Splitting your list into different categories is known as “segmentation” and there are many ways you can segment a list, such as when they joined your list, what they have bought from you, whether they open your emails, or specific interests they indicate.
When you ensure your communication is tailored to the needs of individual segments, you will have much better results.
Step Up Your Offers
It’s said the most important sale in any relationship is not the first, it’s the second.
So you always want to be thinking of the next sale you can make to someone based on where they are in your process.
That is what turns one-off customers into long-term relationships.
Here are some of the keys to achieving that:
Find ways to turn a sale into a long-term commitment.
Upsell: Look for opportunities to sell people something in addition to what they have already bought. That may be at the same time as the sale or soon afterward.
Continuity: Find ways to turn a sale into a long-term commitment through some kind of regular fee arrangement.
Retention: Work on ways to keep people with you – especially if you have a product or service that people don’t need to buy very often. Look for ways to reward your best customers – even a “thank you” or small gift can pay huge dividends.
Referrals: While referrals are a very effective way of getting new customers, they are also great for holding on to your existing ones. People are less likely to move on if they have recommended you to someone else.
Reactivation: Past customers can become future customers if you stay in touch and give them an incentive to return.
Getting the Balance Right
All stages in the communication process are important for building long-term profitable relationships. However, the emphasis can depend on what stage you are at with your business.
If you don’t have many customers, for example, you will need to work harder in the early stages to get more people on board.
Many businesses make the mistake of putting all their efforts into attracting new prospects.
Even with a small number of customers, it’s often best to focus on existing customers and contacts first.
As a general guide, you should usually allocate your time as follows:
60% on existing customers – and most of that with your best customers
30% on prospects, seeking to convert them into customers
10% on everybody else, aiming to turn them into prospects
ACTION PLAN TO TURN PROSPECTS INTO IDEAL CLIENTS
These five actions will help you turn more prospects into ideal clients.
Identify the first five emails you will send to new people signing up to your email list.
Decide how you will communicate regularly with your subscribers – e.g. ezine or regular emails and plan content for the first six weeks.
Identify how best to segment your email lists between different types of subscribers.
Identify an offer you can make to encourage new subscribers to buy from you quickly.
Choose three to five ways you can get more referrals from existing clients.
The 5 Keys to Being Seen as an Authority
This is one of the five keys to building your authority as shown below.
Positioning: Identify your ideal clients and how you can best help them so you can attract them easily
Packaging: Offer your advice, skills, and knowledge in a way that makes it easy to attract a large number of high-paying clients
Publishing: Demonstrate your expertise in a wide range of ways so that people can see how you can help them
Promotion (Lead Generation): Take steps to attract more of your ideal clients to you instead of having to chase them
Persuasion (Conversion): Turn more of your ideal prospects into profitable long-term clients
Click on the links above for more information on each of the elements.
Both authors are experts in the study of human behavior in this field and each has drawn up a list from their research of the things that make a difference.
The list below summarises the 10 Laws of Persuasion as listed in Kevin Hogan’s book.
Law of Reciprocity: When someone gives you something of perceived value, you immediately respond with the desire to give something back.
Law of Time: People will behave differently depending on whether their primary time orientation is present, past, or future.
Law of Contrast: When two things, people, or places that are relatively different from each other, are placed nearer together in time, space, or thought, they appear to be more different from each other.
Law of Friends: When someone asks you to do something and you perceive the person has your best interests in mind, and/or you would like them to have your best interests in mind, you are strongly motivated to fulfill the request.
Law of Expectancy: When someone you respect and/or believe in expects you to perform a task or produce a certain result, you will tend to fulfill his expectation whether positive or negative.
Law of Consistency: When an individual announces in writing (or verbally) that he is taking a position on any issue or point of view, he will strongly tend to defend that belief regardless of its accuracy, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Law of Association: We tend to like products, services, or ideas that are endorsed by other people we like or respect.
Law of Scarcity: When a person perceives that something he might want is limited in quantity, he believes the value of what he might want to be greater than if it were available in abundance.
Law of Conformity: Most people tend to agree to proposals, products, or ideas that will be perceived as acceptable by the majority of other people or a majority of “the group.”
Law of Power: People have power over other people to the degree that they are perceived as having greater authority, strength, or expertise.
If you want to persuade someone to buy your product or service, you’ll find it much easier if you are offering something they already want.
This may seem too obvious to be even worth mentioning but the truth is many people set up businesses with great ideas or good intentions based on what they think might be appropriate or good for people.
The key when you want to persuade someone to buy is thinking about what they ‘want’ rather than what they ‘need’ as people will usually spend more on something they want.
How your USP can persuade someone to buy
This was perhaps best set out by advertising legend Rosser Reeves when he coined the term Unique Selling Proposition and set out the following criteria for a good USP in his book “Reality in Advertising” in 1961:
Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit.
The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique– either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.
The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions; i.e. pull over new customers to your product. (In other words, it should sell – because it is something your prospects really want.)
When we want to persuade someone to buy, let’s start by getting clear whether we have something that they want to buy.
The keys to that are as follows:
What are the specific benefits your customers will get from buying your product or service?
How do know you they are willing to buy it?
When we want to persuade someone to buy, let’s start by getting clear whether we have something that they want to buy.
Focusing on benefits to persuade someone to buy
Many business owners describe what they do by a label or product name – “I’m a consultant” or “We clean carpets”.
To persuade someone to buy, you need to think of your products or services in terms of what they do for your customers.
One way to approach this is by viewing it from your customer’s perspective and thinking about the problems they have or what they want to achieve.
What problems do people have that your products and services can solve?
If there is no problem to be solved, what opportunities or benefits can you offer that they are already looking for?
What are they currently buying to solve this problem or satisfy this need?
What’s wrong with the current solutions so that their wants are not being fully satisfied?
Why have they not satisfied this want already?
Another way of thinking about this is in terms of features and benefits.
A feature is some basic factual information about your product or service. For example, in a computer, one of the features may be that it has 1 gigabyte storage capacity.
Some people will understand what that’s all about but others won’t have a clue. So it’s important to spell out exactly what that means to them. This is the benefit.
For example, “It has 1 gigabyte of storage capacity, which means you can store as much information as you want with virtually no fear of filling it up.”
Try to uncover the ultimate end goal for a prospect interested in your product or service. For example, for tooth whitening, you might be tempted to say the end goal is to have white teeth.
But the end goal could be appearing more attractive to potential partners and having more confidence. Sometimes, you have to dig deep to find the real benefit.
Are they willing to buy?
It is one thing for people to say they want something and another for them to be willing to buy it at the price you want to sell it for.
So, if you want to persuade someone to buy something, it’s important not only to have identified something they want but also to have evidence that they are willing to pay for it.
You need to be able to identify who your potential customers are and establish data like the potential size of the market and details of competitors and their products.
In general, when you look at your market, you should see competition as being a good thing as it usually shows that there is a demand. Sure it’s good to be innovative with some new ideas but it’s also risky to break completely new ground where there is no existing competition.
So when you know you have something that people want to buy, the next step is finding out what makes your offer unique.
According to Albert Einstein “everything should be made as simple as possible but not one bit simpler.”
That’s a useful guideline when creating communications designed to build your authority.
The magical number 7 is one of the key things to bear in mind when doing that.
If you think about the fact that each of your customers is being bombarded with millions of bits of information per second you’ll realize that they don’t have time to work out what you are trying to say.
So, the most important step in building your authority is figuring out what your key messages are.
The magical number 7 proves to be an important part of this process.
Our capacity to deal with information depends on many factors and varies between people.
However, in the book Flow,Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi estimated that the average human mind can handle about 126 bits of information every second.
He based this on an earlier research paper by psychologist George Miller called The Magical Number Seven.
The Magical Number 7 and Handling Information
According to Miller, we can consciously handle between five and nine pieces of information at any one time (seven plus or minus two).
(The numbers are different because our minds work so fast that we can process several sets of 7 bits every second.)
The exact meaning of a ‘bit’ varies depending on the circumstances but it could be something like numbers, colors, or facts.
It’s much easier to remember a six-digit telephone number than it is to remember a ten-digit one, for example.
(In his paper, he also comments on the significance of the number seven throughout our society including the wonders of the world, ages of man, deadly sins, days of the week, colors of the rainbow, and many more.)
As often happens with this type of scientific research, Miller’s work has been widely misrepresented to prove a lot of different points.
The magical number 7 is a useful guideline for building your authority and improving your communication rather than an unbreakable rule that must always be followed slavishly.
The magical number 7 proves to be a relevant and valuable guideline in planning communication and marketing.
Miller himself commented that there is nothing in his work that made it necessary for Moses to drop any of the 10 commandments!
However, it proves to be a relevant and valuable guideline in planning communication and marketing.
If you want to get a message across to someone, it’s useful to consider that they will probably be unable to deal with more than seven bits of information.
Since they probably have several different things going on in their minds at the same time, your big challenge is to get them to pay attention to anything you want to say.
So you have to keep your message clear, simple, and limited to a few key points.
If you want people to take action, it’s probably best to focus them on one specific action which you want them to take rather than offer too many different options.
So, in any communication, it’s important to be clear about what single action you want them to take or what one key point you want them to remember.
If you are planning a presentation, can you limit it to around 5 – 7 key points?
If you are sending out an email, what single action do you want people to take?
Using the magical number 7 to keep your message simple will make it much more effective.
When you have taken the right steps for positioning and packaging, you need to promote your expertise so that you are seen as an authority in your market.
This will help you attract as many prospective ideal clients as possible.
The big mistake many people make is they rush out to start looking only for clients, customers, or patients who are ready to sign up now.
However, the reality is there is likely to be a fairly small group of people who are ready to give you money TODAY for whatever you are offering.
If you focus all your efforts only on people who are ready to buy today, you will miss out on big opportunities.
That’s why successful marketing usually follows a two-step approach.
The Two-Step Marketing Principle to Promote Your Expertise
The best marketing approach usually involves the following two steps.
Generating Leads: You want to start by attracting the interest of people who fit your definition of an ideal client. They may not be ready to buy from you today but they are sufficiently interested in what you offer to put up their hand and say so.
Converting Leads into Customers: Once someone has demonstrated that they are interested in what you offer, you need to have a system that encourages as many of them as possible to stay with you longer and invest more.
While there is naturally a consistent flow between the two stages, the marketing approach and message for each part is different.
“If you focus all your efforts only on people who are ready to buy today, you will miss out on big opportunities.”
Most businesses arguably put too much effort into the first stage – going out looking for new clients.
The real secret of success is usually putting most of your marketing effort into the second stage to build deeper relationships with existing clients.
Having said that, leads from new prospects are the lifeblood of your business and you won’t get far in the later steps if you don’t do well in the first.
In this step, we’ll concentrate on the steps involved in generating a steady supply of your ideal prospects.
In the next step, we’ll look at how you then convert these prospects into profitable, long-term ideal client relationships.
The Marriage Cliché
In many ways, building relationships with clients and prospective clients is similar to building relationships in your personal life. While it may seem an obvious cliché, there are useful parallels.
Most people wouldn’t rush up and ask for someone’s phone number without first establishing some interest.
Most people don’t propose marriage on the first date.
There are, of course, exceptions to both rules but in business it pays to get the balance right.
The job of your marketing is first to establish your prospect’s interest and then to show them, over time, why they should build a relationship with you.
Just as in your personal life, business relationships can click into place right away and someone might buy quickly. Other times, it will take longer to build that level of interest and trust.
Your aim is really to build a large personal address book of people who have expressed interest in you – and then stay in touch with them until they buy – rather than have to rely on the public telephone directory.
The first step in the process of promoting your expertise is that you need to attract people who are interested in what you do so that you can then stay in touch and communicate with them.
There are two key elements needed to do this successfully:
Platform: Somewhere people can find out more about you and where you can collect their information
Promotion: A planned program to drive as many of your ideal prospects as possible to visit your platform
Building Your Platform to Promote Your Expertise
Your platform is the place where you encourage people to go so that you can collect their contact details.
Usually, this will be a website or blog as it is often the easiest way to collect contact details. But it can be a phone number they can call or fax information to. The key elements of your Platform are:
Powerful magnet which offers people a reason to give you their details.
Prominent opt-in making it a priority to capture name, e-mail address, or other information from prospects.
Persuasive message emphasizing why they should give you their details.
Prompt follow-up delivering the magnet, thanking them for their details, and establishing the relationship.
Promoted everywhere ensuring all your marketing efforts are focused on sending people to this opt-in page
Powerful Magnet
Giving a better reason to sign up creates a stronger magnet.
If you want someone to give you their contact details, you need to give them a reason for doing so.
The better the reason you give them, the stronger your magnet is.
When you have a strong magnet, it will not only attract more prospects, it will also make them more likely to stick.
Your magnet could for example be one or more of the following:
Series of lessons in a mini-course
Special report or white paper
Video or audio for download or viewing online
Regular e-newsletter or tips
Workbook or checklist
Webinar
Creating this type of information is much easier than you think. You just need a series of short articles – which you don’t even need to write – or you can repackage content created for another purpose.
While the aim of your magnet is partly to encourage people to give you their details, it should also demonstrate your expertise.
A good magnet should make people want to know more about what you can do for them.
Prominent Opt-in
The most important aim of the first stage of your marketing is to collect the contact details of your potential ideal clients. That means, for example, that the main objective of your website or blog should be to collect contact information. You may only get one chance to do that so you need to make it as easy as possible.
To do that, you usually need a professional autoresponder service from a specialist such as Active Campaign or ConvertKit. They will give you code you can include on your website to create a signup box for people to leave their details.
To collect details from as many people as possible, you should use every opportunity to display your sign-up box. For example:
Your sign-up boxes should be prominent
There should be several sign-up boxes on every page
You should consider using pop-ups, pop-unders, and exit pop-ups
However, you are likely to get the best results by focusing your marketing effort on “landing pages” which are focused entirely on getting the contact information. If you send people just to your website home page, they may be distracted by other elements.
Depending on your business, you may have a range of different magnets and landing pages to reflect different offers and different ideal clients.
Persuasive Message
Simply offering something free is not enough to encourage people to give you their details. People feel they get enough junk mail – whether by post or by email – and they are not just going to hand out their details to anyone.
You therefore need to convince them why they should give you their contact information.
You need to sell the benefits of signing up to your list just as if you were offering a product for sale.
Depending on the moment, you may do that with an appealing graphic and a strong headline, you may add a few bullet points or you could even have a longer sales letter. Your aim is not simply to get lots of people to sign up; it’s to attract the right kind of people – your ideal clients.
To build your list, you will need to ask for the email address at least; asking for their name enables you to personalize the messages and you can also ask for more information such as phone number or physical address.
Generally, asking for more information will lower the response but may well attract people who are more likely to be your ideal clients and allow you to build a deeper relationship with them.
Prompt Follow Up
Finally, having collected someone’s contact details, you need to ensure you follow up right away to deliver what you promised them and to tell them what to expect next.
The key to building the largest prospect list possible is ensuring your marketing activity is focused on driving people to pages where they will be encouraged to sign up for your email list.
You can have several different pages perhaps promoting magnets covering different areas of your business but you should always be driving people to pages where they are encouraged to sign up and give you their details.
Promoting Your Expertise
You need to use as many different approaches as possible to promote your expertise and attract a regular supply of your ideal prospects.
Use different approaches to promote your message
However, the purpose of your promotion is not about persuading people to buy.
The aim of your promotion is first to ensure that large numbers of people in your target market are aware that you exist – and then to give them a reason to contact you so that you can build a relationship.
You need to do enough in your promotion to attract their interest so that they contact you – either direct or by giving you their details – so that you can follow up with them.
There are many different options available for promoting your expertise and they generally fall into one of the following categories:
Personal Branding
Publishing Externally
Publicity
Paid-for Advertising and Promotion
Partnership
Let’s look at each of these in more detail.
Personal Branding
You can use a range of activities to increase your personal profile online and offline to get your name and reputation better known.
For example:
Writing: Communicate through blog posts, articles, or books.
Speaking: People who speak are automatically seen as experts.
Networking and Events: Who you know can be more important than what you know.
Social Media: Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and X can be useful to expand your contacts and reputation.
Publishing Externally
When you share some of your expertise with others, they can see what you know, how you work, and how you can help them.
As we discussed in a separate post, publishing valuable content helps build your authority. But it also plays a role in promotion when you actively aim to get your content in front of more people.
Some of the most effective strategies for publishing your expertise include the following:
Blog or Website: Can act as the hub for your information.
Free Reports: Offering special reports or white papers.
Article Writing: Published online and offline.
Video Marketing: Building your profile and website traffic.
Book: One of the best ways of proving you are an expert.
Seminars, webinars, and workshops: Live seminars and workshops or online teleseminars and webinars.
SEO and Local Search: Ensuring your website can be found in online search and that your business ranks well in local search.
Publicity
Publicity is a great way to reach a lot of people
Publicity is a great way to reach a lot of people with a limited budget. You just need to have a message that is newsworthy.
You need something fresh – something that people would want to know about.
This approach includes tactics such as press releases, event marketing, sponsorship, community involvement, contests, and media kits.
Paid-for Advertising and Promotion
While there are many free and low-cost ways of promoting your business, paid-for marketing can help you reach a bigger audience and see faster results. The most effective paid options include:
PPC: Pay-per-click advertising such as Google AdWords.
Direct Mail: Using well-targeted lists produces measurable results.
Postcards: Low-cost and highly effective.
Classified Ads: Effective at moving leads from offline to online.
Newsletter Advertising and Sponsorship: Someone with existing access to your market.
Partnership
One of the fastest ways to grow your business is to get the help of others. One way you can do that is through support from existing customers. Another is through people and businesses that give access to the market you want to reach.
Here are some examples of how partnership can help you grow.
Testimonials: Stories of results from existing clients.
Referrals: Current customers referring others to you.
Customer Research: Finding out what people want.
Affiliates: Getting others to sell your product or service.
Joint Ventures: Working with other businesses for mutual benefit.
Effective Planning
These are some of the main marketing methods you can use. The key is to find the right ones for you. Many business owners make one or other of the following mistakes:
Choose too few methods and don’t get maximum benefit
Choose too many and don’t use any of them effectively
While you’ll ultimately want to use a range of promotional techniques, the key is to start slowly. It’s best to master a few so you are getting good results rather than trying to do too much too soon. Choose three or four techniques as your priorities to get started. If you find it easier, focus on one at a time – perhaps one a month.
It’s important to make sure they all work together effectively and that your message remains consistent across all of them.
Once you have chosen the strategies you are going to use, you need a calendar of daily, weekly, monthly, and occasional activities to make sure they happen.
In order to ensure you are getting the best value for your time and money, you need to be constantly:
Tracking your results so you know the return for every dollar.
Testing approaches such as new headlines and messages to get better results from your activity.
ACTION PLAN TO PROMOTE YOUR EXPERTISE
Answering these five questions should help you promote your expertise and attract more ideal clients.
What topic will you cover in your new powerful lead generation magnet?
What five new promotion methods will you add to drive traffic to that magnet?
What topic(s) could you produce a postcard on and where could you get a suitable mailing list to mail it to?
Identify three to five topics that you can use to generate publicity.
Where can you find partners to help you reach more prospective clients?
The 5 Keys to Being Seen as an Authority
This is one of the five keys to building your authority as shown below.
Positioning: Identify your ideal clients and how you can best help them so you can attract them easily
Packaging: Offer your advice, skills, and knowledge in a way that makes it easy to attract a large number of high-paying clients
Publishing: Demonstrate your expertise in a wide range of ways so that people can see how you can help them
Promotion (Lead Generation): Take steps to attract more of your ideal clients to you instead of having to chase them
Persuasion (Conversion): Turn more of your ideal prospects into profitable long-term clients
Click on the links above for more information on each of the elements.
