The most important question in business is – “how do I get more business?” We hear it every day, and the answer is always the same. Marketing! Now marketing has seen a revolution in the past thirty years, gone are the days of newspaper campaigns and lumpy mail. Now with Facebook and Google you can get right in front of your customers for the right price.
But, if it’s that easy why isn’t everyone profiting? Well, just “doing” marketing is easy. However, excellent marketing that gets results is not!
These are the six rules that we apply to each and every marketing campaign that we do, be it online or not. Much like baking a cake if you follow the recipe you will get a result!
# Rule 1: Plan to sell from the start
Now, you do not want to come across as the sales person hunting out their next victim but you need to give ample opportunity for your prospects to do business with you! That’s what we are here for right?
Different people buy at different stages, give them the option to do so or you will lose the easy sales.
# Rule 2: Join their conversation
Right now your prospects have fears and concerns. They have wishes and dreams, and your job when you are building a marketing campaign is to find out what they are.
You want to jump into the conversation that they are already having in their heads. Ask yourself the following questions to get the thoughts rolling.
- What do they talk to their partner about over dinner?
- What keeps them up at night?
- What is the worst possible scenario that they could think of?
- What is the total solution to that scenario?
- In all your marketing you want to demonstrate that you know their story and are the perfect fit for them.
# Rule 3: Offers are time sensitive!
People are lazy, there I said it. We will put things off if we can, I don’t know how many years my wife and I have said we would renovate but given that we could renovate at any time, we were not in a rush.
That was right up until we found out about new zoning laws in our local area that meant we could never renovate after November 2015. After that, we moved faster than contestants on The Block.
The same is for your prospects, if they can find an excuse to put it off, simply put they will. So make it snappy for them, your offer is now or never.
# Rule 4: Trade something
If you want emails, phone numbers, meetings with prospects they are not going to give it up for free. Offer them something simple yet ideal for their scenario?
If it is online, checklists, white papers, blue prints and so on work very well. If it is offline, potential business relationships, referrals, information and assessments work perfectly.
You will get a lot of guidance around what to choose from the questions in Rule #2.
# Rule 5: Give clear instructions
You know those daytime tv infomercials that tell you to “buy now” nearly 30 times in a 60 second advertisement.
They do that because it works, this goes hand in hand with my point in Rule #3, people are lazy. Make it very easy for them to claim your offer, contact you or find out more. Telling them to do so will get much better results than not.
# Rule 6: Results, results, results!
If you are paying for marketing you are paying for marketing. Not an excuse as to why your marketing did not work.
If you are marketing independently, then you need to look at your results and forget your emotions. If a campaign is not working, then it is not working and needs to change. It amazes me how many people will continue to spend money because they “feel” like it is a good campaign.
Results rule, if it works support it, if it doesn’t change it.
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