Building Your Marketing System

1. Building Your Marketing System How to generate consistent qualified leads

2. Creating Your Message • Before you can build your marketing system, you need to figure out what your message will be. Make it: • Clear • Simple • Short • Urgent

3. Creating Your Message • Every prospect you approach is asking themselves 4 questions: • What are you trying to sell me? • What does it cost? • Why should I believe you? • What happens if it doesn’t work?

4. Creating Your Message • Develop a list of newspaper headlines to catch your prospects’ attention. • Use strong active verbs to create a sense of immediacy. • Use the present tense. • Keep it simple, short and direct. • Provide enough information to make them take notice.

5. Start With the Community • Share first, sell later. • Solve first, sell later. • Teach first, sell later.

6. Start With the Community • But before you look to plug in, make sure that you’re bringing a valid value proposition to the table. You need to be able to answer: • What value do customers say we deliver to them? • Which one of our customer’s problems are we helping to solve? • Which customer needs are we satisfying? • What bundles of products and services are we offering to each customer segment?

7. Start With the Community • Assess your customers’ social networking activities • Posting ratings and product reviews • Commenting on blogs and articles • Maintaining profiles on social networking sites and directories • Sharing article, video links

8. Start With the Community • Decide what you want to accomplish. Do you want them to: • Pick up the phone and call • Stop by your location • Visit your website/Facebook page • Return a coupon • Register for an event/webinar • Sign up for a newsletter

9. Start With the Community • Plan for how your relationship will develop • How many interactions • What kind • Where, when and how • What set of messages

10. Decide Which Digital or Traditional Tools to Use Traditional Tools Digital Tools • Personal letters • One pagers • Public speaking • Print ads • Postcards/Self mailers • Editorial writing • Books • Webinars • Search engine optimization • Paid search • eNewsletters • Twitter/Facebook • Blogs/Websites

11. Start With the Community • Determine when they’re likely to be engaged: • During work • After work • On the weekends

12. Start With the Community • Tract the frequency of their engagement • Understand how social media use changes with different buyer segments at different stages of the buying cycle.

13. Start With the Community • Lead Generation • Use social networks to join/create communities on key topics • Use CRM with automation features to nurture prospects • Provide valuable content and resources to adapt and share

14. Content Marketing • Content is buyer information. Content tells you something about where a buyer is in their buying cycle. • Develop content that maps to buyer’s information needs.

15. Content Marketing • Contribute content on a regular basis • Put up a blog post or start a dialogue on a relevant blog • Contribute relevant content (yours or someone’s) via social networks • Pitch a new idea to a journalist or blogger • Attend an event and broadcast content from the venue • Spread the news when your quoted in the media or blogs

16. Content Marketing • What Kind of Content? • Press releases containing actual news • Video (e.g. One minute product/service videos) • Podcasts (interview execs, influencers, competitors) • Articles (about you, about industry) • Blog posts, blog comments, tweets • Research – white papers, surveys, etc.

17. Content Marketing • “Produced content” becomes the social object for people to interact around. This extends the notion of social networking from just connecting people-to-people, to creating social affinities where people can interact with and around the content they love.

18. Content Marketing Strategies • Speak on the lecture circuit • At churches, community groups, alumni groups, chambers of commerce, etc to help you build referrals. • Write magazine and journal articles • Articles increase your name recognition and boost your credibility. • Publish books and reports • Once you have your name on a publication you’re considered an expert on the subject.

19. Content Marketing Strategies • Write a blog • Deploy a steady stream of engaging posts combined with posts on other sites to attract readers, • Teach seminars and workshops • Attendees will spread the word about your expertise. • Publish your own newsletter • A great way to keep your name and your services in front of clients and potential clients.

20. Content Marketing • Cross promote with links: • Your LinkedIn profile links to your blog; your blog links to your channel on YouTube…which has a link to your Twitter stream and your website links to everything.

21. You Can’t Do it All… • Choose a couple of tools to begin with: Facebook; Twitter; Blogs • Start by listening • Don’t neglect your directory profiles

22. Community is not the Platform; it’s About the Connections You Make • Everyone wears an invisible sign that says make me feel important!!

23. David Merman Scott • “Everyone is looking for attention. There are lots of different ways to generate attention: You can buy attention in the form of advertising. You can beg for attention in the form of public relations. You can bug people one by one for attention in the form of sales or you can earn attention by getting people to talk about you, spread your ideas, and tell your stories.”

24. Return on Influence • Highlight and praise personal and professional successes of your community and it can come back to you as help in various parts of the sales cycle: • Lead generation • Referrals • Post-sale education • Word-of-mouth

25. Word-of-Mouth Marketing • 72.0 million - US adults who will regularly give word-of-mouth advice about products or services in 2011, up from 65.0 million in 2006

26. Word-of-Mouth Marketing • 30.4% - Percent of US adults who will regularly give word-of-mouth advice about products or services in 2011, up from 29.0% in 2006

27. Word-of-Mouth Marketing • 34.4 million - US adult Internet users who will be word-of-mouth influencers* in 2011, up from 23.7 million in 2006

28. Word-of-Mouth Marketing • 20.0% - Percent of US adult Internet users who will be word-of-mouth influencers* in 2011, up from 16% in 2006 Note: ages 18+; *adults who are opinion leaders and whose advice is sought, trusted and acted upon by other consumers Source: eMarketer

29. Word-of-Mouth Marketing • Word-of-mouth has enormous potential to help drive high quality socially referred traffic to your website.

30. Your Goal • Establish a one-to-one-to-many relationship with your customer On average, most people have about 130-150 members in their network.

31. Your Goal • Just imagine if 10 of your email subscribers shared your content with their network…you would immediately increase your reach by 1,300-1,500 prospects.

32. Your Goal • Strive to make it easy for the person you’re communicating with to share your content with their network.

33. Your Goal • What Makes People Share? • Contributing to the conversation: Sharing benefits people through the value of the information shared in return. • Self Interest: Sharing rewards the pocketbook. Sharing makes people feel better. • Validation: Sharing feeds the ego. • Affinity: Sharing makes people feel more a part of the community. Sharing makes people feel less guilty for gawking or lurking.

34. Marketing Tools ROI • Commercial email returned $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. • Internet search advertising returned $21.85 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. • Non-catalog direct mail returned $15.22 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. • Catalogs returned $7.32 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. Source: “Power of Direct” economic impact study: Global Insight on behalf of the DMA

35. Which Channels Performed Strongly for Your Company?

36. Renting Email Lists • Renting email lists can be tricky (think bad lists, CAN-SPAM and filtering). • With search prices so high and email prices relatively steady, many businesses are taking another look at list rental.

37. Renting Email Lists • The size of the industry is anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 lists. • B-to-B list rental business is healthy and centered on reputable publishers who still command value and trust. • The B-to-C list industry is less organized, and many lists aren’t worth a dime.

38. Renting Email Lists • First a definition: A list rental is the purchase of a third party’s email list for one-time use (unless negotiated otherwise). The emails are sent on your behalf using your creative and your subject line to a list of people who have knowingly signed up to receive email offers from the named list owner.

39. Renting Email Lists • Points to keep in mind: • You never get access to the list of email names. • The name of the company in the “From” line is the list owner's, not yours. • You and the list owner agree on the number of recipients and the send date/time. • Have the list run against your suppression Do-Not-Email list.

40. Renting Email Lists • Be sure to research which list brokers are best for your niche, and also request tests and negotiate for the best trial prices. • You have to be good at measuring lifetime customer value.

41. Renting Email Lists • You'll hear a lot of different pricing numbers out there: • Consumers lists are running anywhere from $90 to $160 per thousand names (CPM). • Prices range from $65-$125 per thousand names for larger, aggregated databases. • For B2B, lower-end aggregated small business or opportunity seeker lists start around $75 per thousand.

42. Renting Email Lists • Make sure you’re renting lists that are double opt-in (emails are gathered, but rather than added to the list immediately, the names are sent a secondary email requiring a response to opt in to the list).

43. Prospecting Using Social Media • Share helpful tools and other high-value resources • Link to a special “Tips and Advice" area of your website • Create a savings calculator to show how taking action can save them money • Produce a How-To video

44. Prospecting Using Social Media • Monitor Twitter for keywords • Set up a series of key phrases to search on Twitter that indicate a user who needs help, has a question, or is looking for the type of services/products you offer. • For example: Looking for a good chiropractor; recommend a good chiropractor, etc.

45. Prospecting Using Social Media • Use LinkedIn Answers • This Q&A feature that lets members of that network post or respond to questions on specific business topics.

46. Prospecting Using Social Media • Friend and follow journalists and bloggers • Journalists are increasingly turning to their social networks with requests for sources, story ideas and subject matter expertise: • See http://www.helpareporter.com/

47. Prospecting Using Social Media • Claim and update your profiles across multiple directories • Google Places • Facebook Places • Yelp • Citysearch • Yellowpages.com • Four Square • Where • Etc.