Small Business Marketing | Marketing for Entrepreneurs | Realtor Marketing » client contact

Lead Generating – What Is A Lead And Are You Following Up?

Tara Jacobsen — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 22:57:04 +0000

Lead generating is an art not a science. You need to try all different kinds of things before you will find a couple that will work for your business.

Leads come from a variety of places including referrals, websites, social media, in person networking, public relations, open houses, putting your business card on a bulletin board, teaching classes and many other places. If you are a good lead generator, your leads should be showing up from all different sources. Our current clients come from speaking, Facebook, my sphere, a referral, networking, a referral, past client and more!

Having you client base come from a variety of sources means that you can never lose all of your leads at one time. If all of your leads come from the internet and your site goes down, you are out of business. If all your leads come from your networking group and it shuts down, bam, you are back to square one.

Additionally, make sure that the contact number you use in your marketing goes to a salesperson, not the switchboard or an answering service. The warm fuzzy that sales people give them is PRICELESS!

What is a lead?

I was talking with a client today and she said she had not gotten any leads from her website. WEIRD – she had told me of at least 3 or 4 people who had called or emailed her requesting more information about her services. Well to her, a lead was someone ready, willing and able to sign up for her services with one phone call – that doesn’t happen too often to many of us!

So let us break down what a lead is – In your sales process, a lead comes in and then you take them down a progression of steps that could look this:

A call comes in requesting information
You send them an email with your info
You send them a nice postcard thanking them for asking about your services
They do not call back
You put them on your email list and drip on them
You call them again and leave a nice message
They do not call back
You call again and hit them at the right time for them to buy – cha ching!

All those steps are vital to getting the sale. If you send one email or make one phone call and do not follow up, you lead could fall prey to someone else who is more aggressive about staying in touch!

How Should You Follow Up On Your Leads

There are many ways to follow up on a lead, here are some that I have used or heard about!

Phone them once a week until they die or buy! My friends who are aggressive prospectors say this. The best line I get from them is that they are pleasantly persistent.
Send a card or postcard in the mail. I use a database that allows me to send out postcards for about a buck. This is a good way to make them know YOU are interested in THEM!
Email them a personal note talking about your services.
“Friend” them on Facebook and keep in touch that way.
Invite them to an event you having.
Send them your email newsletter with great information.

Basically do anything you can to stay top of mind with this person. They have expressed an interest in your services or product, do not drop the ball now!

PS – In talking further with my client, we found out that she is as bad at followup as I am. If you think this all sounds like too much to bear, hire a sales person. Many will work for commission or a stipend with bonus paid for signups. The really good ones are worth paying outright AND adding a bonus!

How To Use Email For Marketing from Top 10 Internet Tools

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:24:54 +0000

How to do email marketing

How to use email for marketing is simple. It is not easy but the benefits you get FAR outweigh the time it takes to become proficient! In Learn Use the Top 10 Internet Tools for Small Business, I talked about 10 things that I thought were super vital for your internet success. Here you will find out about how to make the most of email marketing.

For each of these items I am going to start with advanced ideas and work back to beginner basics. The reason for this is that there is A LOT of information out there about basic email marketing and I have found that if I tell my readers hard concepts they get them (after a while..:)

EMAIL MARKETING – THE MONEY IS IN THE LIST

When you have a list of people who have agreed to receive emails from you, you hold great responsibility. They have said that you can take their time in exchange for providing them with good information.

What software should you use for keeping track of your lists?

Email Marketing Software Programs â€“ If you have over about 250 people in your database I highly recommend that you start having your people in a â€œrealâ€ email program.

Aweber â€“ This is the one that I recommend to all my non-realtor clients considering starting with a “real” email marketing program. Aweber has great email and autoresponder capabilities, meaning that if you are targeting different types of prospects you can do it from one place. The one drawback is that you cannot manually add people individually after your initial upload so be careful if you are wanting to use this as a general contact database (you can have them signup via a web form). Sign up for their FREE trial and see if it will work for you.
Constant Contact â€“ This is a friendly email program that is great for beginners but it really makes me mad that they do not have multiple autoresponders so you can not target multiple types of clients (although you can set up multiple types of lists). That being said, it is SUPER easy to use and has really pretty email newsletter templates if you have only one type of client.
Brokers Helper â€“ BEST Email marketing program for Realtors with lots of templates and ease of use. They have a FREE trial also!
My Red Tools – Brokers Helper program for KW Realtors (you get a little discount) They have a FREE trial also!

Almost every small business owner I speak with wants to know what database they can use for everything. Their shopping cart and email marketing and direct mail and the list goes on and on. I wish that there was one UBER program that could handle all of these things well that was affordable for everyone but I have yet to find it. Once you know that you will be managing multiple lists you can get to the business of marketing and stop complaining about how hard it is!

Here are some things you can do to monetize your emails:

Send out information about your product or service. This can be done in a non-spammy way by providing great information and then adding a link to find out more about your offering. This is number one because generally your highest ROI is from selling your own products or service. For example – a garage door guy could send out an email about how to winterize your garage door and then put a link to his page or post that offers that service on a paid basis.
Send out emails with affiliate offers in them. This requires that you sign up to be an affiliate with a company or to have a referral agreement with a partner. Almost any business has affiliate programs that are relevant to them and it is easier than ever to get information about available offers. I like to use www.offervault.com to find great offers easily.
Email information about your industry. This is the most passive kind of email as there is no call to action to buy anything. That having been said, Lori Crawford of Trinity Eastlake Real Estate gets a lead almost every time she sends out a newsletter about local real estate information to her list. You would be surprised at how just contacting your list on a regular basis will get you more business!

ADVANCED EMAIL MARKETING

So now you have a regular email marketing program set up..what’s next? Autoresponders! Autoresponders work by sending out a series of emails once someone has signed up for your email list online. All of the email marketing software programs that I recommended you use have some sort of autoresponder built in.

Top Autoresponder Mistakes – Here is my take on the top autoresponder mistakes people make once they get people on their list

Sending out too many messages – I KNOW, everyone says you should send out messages to your list daily or at the very least weekly. I think that people can get overwhelmed when you send out too many messages and that the impact can get diluted. I like to send out two messages a month and have had great feedback on that amount.
Numbering their messages – I have one list I am signed up to that tells me I am on message number 235, etc. I think that they did it for ease of use in setting up their autoresponder series BUT it just reminds me that they have sent me LOTS of messages.
Not adding their blog posts to their autoresponder series. I know that I am a prime offender for this one. DO NOT assume that everyone who signs up for your lists reads your blog posts regularly. This is a great place to get extra content for your autoresponders.

This post is a part of my ongoing posts Top 10 Internet Tools! If you would like to learn more please visit…

Top 10 Internet Tools Writing Great Headlines | How To Use Social Networking

Small Business Marketing – Free Tools

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:28:55 +0000

So I have been talking A LOT about free marketing tools lately since I think this is the best way to “pad” your marketing budget. Make sure you pay for things that matter and get great free tools where available!

Here are three of my favorite free tools!

Free Marketing Tool #1 – Google Local Search Listing

Google Local Free Tool Screen Shot

If you are a local business with a BUSINESS address, there is nothing more powerful than making sure that your property is listed in google’s local search. I did a search for denver mary kay sales people and Â the ones that have registered with google come up front and center.

Think about that – 3 Mary Kay people are being highlighted in the ENTIRE Denver Metro area. They are not struggling to get people to notice them, we can guess that they get incoming calls asking about their services!

Free Marketing Tool #2 – Eyejot Emails

We love Brian P. Forrester of TriCounty Mortgage, he gets the fact that he has to do marketing and that he should be paying us to help so that he can write loans. BUT I have to say that I respond the most to his FABULOUS eyejot.com videos!

When he sends out his video messages about realtor information he is accomplishing NUMEROUS things! He is giving valuable information to his clients. They may share it with potential realtor prospects (Brian, start suggesting sharing at the end), he is establishing himself as an expert in the area that he talks about AND he is training his people to expect regular communications from him (Brian, send these out weekly!).

While Brian pays a couple of bucks to have his eyejots branded, you can get started with the free ones right out of the box!

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Free Marketing Tool #3 – Jing Project

I use www.jingproject.com to make all my screen capture videos for my online training series (check out my social networking training videos). It is as close to free as humanly possible ($15 a year) for the pro version that makes excellent screen capture videos that you can post on your blog, put up on YouTube and use for many other marketing opportunities.

Again, you are establishing yourself as an expert in your industry, leaving more breadcrumbs around the internet to draw people back to your website (we call those linkbacks or incoming links) and generally providing great information for your clients and prospects.

I KNOW – I have told you about some of these before BUT I am wicked mad that only Cyndee Hadon (fabulous florida realtor) and Brian P. Forrester (tremendous mortgage man in Tampa Bay) are the ONLY ones that send me eyejot videos!

The Power of Your Lists – List Building for Businesses

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:34:05 +0000

There is power in having lists of people who are interested in what you have to say! It used to be that you had to spend thousands of dollars to have access (one time) to a list that someone like infousa.com had, and the people on the list didn’t even know you. That is SERIOUS cold calling and is SO not for me!

Today’s small business owner can build their own list super easily and for VERY little money!

BUT you are going to have to give up the feeling that you can can control your list(s). It used to be that I had one list – my newsletter subscribers. I DO have control of that list. I send out bi-monthly newsletters with marketing information and have a VERY low unsubscribe ratio because I deliver EXACTLY what I promised when they signed up! That list comes from having a blog and a newsletter signup (if you are brand new to blogging and want some help setting one up we have small business blogs for sale!) The newsletter signup is done through my database and is a little more convoluted, although Constant Contact does make it much easier to grow a email newsletter list.

Super Easy Ways to Grow Other Contact Lists

Nowadays, it is easy to grow lists all over the internet. I consider these to be my micro-lists and point them all back this blog with almost everything I do. Now that micro-list moniker doesn’t mean that they have fewer people than my “real” email marketing list – in fact my Twitter list has over 1,300 people on it today. What I do mean is that my influence on that list is smaller. They do not anticipate contact from me the way my email list does. They come and go more easily than my email list does. That doesn’t make them less important to me, just different.

Here are some of my list places:

Twitter – ABSOLUTELY the easiest place to grow a list. There is LOTS of following over there and now that I am driving people from Twitter to Facebook, I feel like I am accomplishing something! Find out more about How To Use Twitter For Small Businesses
Facebook – It is easy to grow your list on Facebook too! They are called “friends” and to start get your real friends, then their friends, then people who share yourÂ interests. Want another friend? Add me on Facebook!
LinkedIn – I think the hardest place to grow a list BUT worth it! You can join groups that allow “open networking” where you can add people.
Meetup – These are people who like to meetup with me in person (I like that!), you can email these people ONLY about the meetup that you are involved with, nothing else!
Individual Groups and Communities – I belong to Iwomanlife.com and freeenterprisewarriors.com and activerain.com where I have communication opportunities with other people. I will say that I have not had the success with these media that I have had with the big three (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook)
Smaller Sites – I have people that follow my youtube.com updates and who are on mybloglog.com. Some people follow my digg.com updates. All these things are bonuses that come from things I do anyways and are never going to set the world on fire but it all adds up!!!
Feedburner - Last but not least, Feedburner sends many of you updates when I post to this blog. Some of you get them on a reader and some get them via email. However you get them, thank you for reading!

Absolutely Free Ebook – How To Pack An Event

Tara Jacobsen — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:38:57 +0000

Here is the link to a totally free ebook on how to get people to attend your event. Whether you are holding a seminar, workshop, party, open house or anything else, you will find some gems here to help get people in the door! I cover using meetup.com, facebook, linkedin, email marketing and some other really great ways to get your message out.

http://marketingartfully.com/How_to_pack_an_event.pdf

How come it is free?

Well, I moved to the Denver area 2 months ago and I was having my first big event (my internet mastermind in Denver) and wanted people to come. I also wanted people to sign up to say they would come to the event, even if they never showed – WHY!?!??! Because people like to go to things that other people are doing – genius I know…:) So anyways, I was in the process of writing a Ebook on how to get people to come to your events and I thought to myself, “how can I get people to sign up even if they aren’t coming?” Then cam a flash of brilliance – bribe them!!!

So, long story short, (too late I know), I am giving this book away, no questions asked, no email required, share it with anyone you want (Seth Godin would be SO proud!). If you like, please comment. If you hate it, don’t bother to complain, it is free…:)

Happy speaking…Tara

PS – I had 10 people who were very interested in internet marketing show up (thanks guys!!), two people who called to say that would have come but heard about it too late, one person on facebook who said the same thing and all the people at the mastermind said they would share the goodness with their friends andÂ colleagues. Can’t ask for any more than that!!!

Building A Community – How it helps your social networking, email list and life!

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:00:38 +0000

How can you build a community, online and offline? According to Miriam Webster a community is “the people with common interests living in a particular area”. In the past your community was limited by proximity and by who you could meet face-to-face. If you wanted to meet someone new you had to ask a friend for an invitation or hope for a chance meeting.

The internet has changed the definition of community! With social networking, blogs and email we are able to have a MUCH bigger community that is not limited by proximity. That having been said, meeting humans face to face is still a great way to build community and your online influence!

Ways to build an in-person community

Your family and friends - when you are thinking of community you sometimes forget your closest connections. During the days when I was a (successful) realtor, my husband generated many of my leads through his work friends. I asked him to find out who would let me send them info about the real estate market in Clearwater and then contacted them through email, direct mail and popbys (fun treats I sent into work).
Networking with humans - I recently moved to the Denver and Boulder area and had zero friends or contacts. I checked on meetup.com for local networking events that were related to business and have been able to add close to one hundred new contacts to my database and found a few really great contacts that may turn into friends. In the past this process would have taken YEARS instead of about 8 weeks. One note – don’t jump on new networking friends with your message…meet them, show them you will continue to come back and then ease into your message. No one likes to be SOLD HARD when they are networking!
Teach classes - I teach social networking classes to anyone who will listen. I am setting up an internet mastermind group that will teach all kinds of online money making skills. I teach realtors how to service their listings. Basically if I can get 5 people to hold still I will start up a class…:) So how does that help? I add them to my database, I am an authority in whatever I am teaching, AND I stay in contact with them through my bi-monthly newsletters.

Ways to build an online community

Join social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter! These allow you to add people from your real-life networking AND will let you connect with new people that are not geographically desirable but who are interesting and a potential client or referral source for your business.
Start a blog – A blog pushes information about your business to potential clients. NO ONE will read repetitive sales ads but LOTS of people may be interested in learning more about your specialty. You are reading this post (I assume) because you are a small business owner who is interested in growing their business. If you are looking for cooking tips sign up to read updates from a cooking site, if you are selling mortgages, health care products or lawn furniture start an informative blog and find people who are interested in that!
Start an email list. These are people who expect regular communication from you. Again, I cannot stress this enough, they expect information that is helpful to them or interesting NOT sales ads! It doesn’t matter how often you communicate with them, some do once a day, some do twice a month like I do. Make sure you send them relevant info AND include a call to action – sell something, grow your facebook page fans, ask for an appointment, whatever as long as you have a REASON for communicating with them in addition to the info!

Well that is it! Do that and you WILL succeed. People will be in your corner and will want to help you grow your business AND you can help grow theirs!!!

Social Networking, Blogging and Sanity

Tara Jacobsen — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:18:45 +0000

How do you keep up with all your social networking and blogging? I use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, digg, Plaxo, Thrive Contact System, Marketing Artfully and Active Rain often. It drives TONS of traffic to my websites, adding more people to my email database which means more people to talk to about my services and speaking gigs!

Here are some of the easy things I do to make all of that a little easier – commonly known as a system!

SOCIAL NETWORKING
It is VERY fun to watch what your friends and business associates are doing and finding new information on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and Twitter and I check most of these once or twice a day. BUT if you are using these to lead generate for your business it is also important to be “on purpose” when you are using these sites. Here are some do’s and do not’s that I follow:

DO – Make sure to post links to your blog posts (see below)
DO – Update your status with new products and services that you are offering
DO – Make comments on your friends’ and business partners’ status
DON’T – Spam them with self-serving updates multiple times a day (putting links to great information is NOT spamming, posting every one of your products or listings over and over is)
DON’T – Put ANYTHING on there that you would not want your best customer to see – the internet never forgets!

BLOGGING
My goal is to blog on one of each of these everyday. I am not always successful BUT the goal is there and I generally get an email everyday that some kind of lead – either for a marketing consult, a referral to one of my business partners or just someone who wants more information about a service I offer. A lead a day is 365 over the course of the year and helps to feed my pipeline!

Marketing Artfully – My main site and the one that I spend the most time on. It has all my product offerings, my shopping cart and is where I send the most people. WHAT I DO: When I write a post here I then add it as a link on Facebook, I often write a mini-post over on Active Rain to drive people back here to read the full post, sometimes I digg it and it automatically goes to Twitter and from there to Plaxo.
Thrive Contact System – This is one of our products and I post info on Database Marketing, Systems and (surprisingly enough) client contacts. I am not as vigilant about this one as I should be BUT it still gets some good organic search traffic and is on the list. WHAT I DO: When I write a post there I then add it as a link on Facebook, sometimes I digg it and it automatically goes to Twitter and from there to Plaxo.
Taradactyl on Active Rain – This one sends LOTS of people my way. It is full of Realtors, Mortgage Pros and Title people (one of my target markets) and I should be WAY more aggressive about posting there! WHAT I DO: Because it is a feeder for my Marketing Artfully blog I don’t tend to do more than write a post BUT it does automatically feed to Twitter and from there to Plaxo.

Hopefully this will help you get your arms around all this work and you can see that it does not have to be overwhelming AND can help generate more business for your business!

What is database marketing? Solving small business marketing problems!

Tara Jacobsen — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:20:06 +0000

According to Wikipedia, database marketing is “a form of direct marketing using databases of customers or potential customers to generate personalized communications in order to promote a product or service for marketing purposes”.

Wow is that not helpful! My definition of database marketing is to have all your clients, potential clients, prospects, vendors, friends and family all in one place that you can use to send out direct mail, email marketing and generate call lists. Currently on my “marketing TV tray” I have a post-it note with a name of someone who I need to add to my database, two business cards and a sign in sheet from a class that I taught. If I do not add them to my database today I will

lose their name entirely
find them in three months and forget why I had their card
find them in six months and be too embarrassed to send anything because they won’t remember me (I KNOW I won’t remember them!)

So how do you use your database for marketing?

Send out emails to your database – This is FREE! You can start a bi-monthly newsletter and send your marketing message out WITH a nice piece of information that will be of value to your readers. For home service people that might be tips on how to winterize their home, ways to clean their grout or even a list of associated vendors they recommend. For real estate professionals it might be market stats, information about first time homebuyers or how to prepare their home for staging. Whatever you send, make sure that you think – “would I be interested in reading this”. If not – write something better! (if you are stuck on what to send, check out our Small Business Marketing Solution – Â Thrive Client Contact System)

Make phone calls – Each month pick a couple of letters (A-C, S and T) and print out your database people whose last name starts with that letter. Carry your list around and when you have a couple of extra minutes call your people!

Send direct mail marketing pieces to your database – You can mail your clients a monthly piece of newsletter marketing, marketing postcards or even your personal brochure. Please note – if you are going to judge the effectiveness of your direct mail campaign by 1 sent message don’t bother. You need to send out your direct mail message for at least 3 months in order to be able to find out if will work! If you can’t afford to send out to your entire database, cut it in half and send half of your people a letter, newsletter or postcard each month, rotating the names so EVERYONE gets something at least every other month!

Some other things you can do with your database:

Collect Birthdays and send a nice card out a couple of days before (I am BAD at this – you WILL NOT get a card!)
Make notes about what you talked about – your people will think you are brilliant when they realize you remember all their personal info! Just pop in and take a peek at their notes BEFORE you call them!
Upload relevant documentation and attach it to their record. You can attach their invoice, sales receipts, contracts etc. by scanning them into a PDF and then uploading them to your database.

If you will commit to using your database, adding EVERYONE you meet the day you meet them, you WILL get more business and make more money!!!

Small Business Marketing – Are You Selling The Steak Or The Sizzle?

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:10:14 +0000

Small Business Marketers are Selling The Steak Instead Of Selling the Sizzle!

What the heck does that mean? Well it means that as humans it is SO much easier for us to sell the features of a product than to figure out the benefits to our target audience. For myself, it is easier to tell you that with our Small Business Internet Express you get a complete website and social media package than it is to “sell” you on all the benefits like increased sales, more exposure to potential clients and more leads.

I have tried for a couple of months to figure out how to get this message out since I am not great at sizzling, so why am I writing this post? Because I saw a BRILLIANT commercial this weekend. You tell which is steak and which is sizzle…

The carefully selected, high quality ingredients in PurinaÂ® Dog ChowÂ® brand Dog Food Complete & Balanced provide 100% of the essential nutrients your dog needs to help stay happy, healthy and satisfied throughout his long, healthy life.

Contains 23 vitamins and minerals

Formulated with high quality protein

Great Taste

HMMMM…VITAMINS AND MINERALS ARE GOOD, PROTEIN IS GOOD

A groundbreaking 14-year study by Purina researchers showed that dogs fed to an ideal body condition** throughout their lives had a median life span of 1.8 years longer – and were considerably healthier – than their littermates.* And although the dogs in the study generally developed the same health conditions as they aged, treatment for those conditions was delayed approximately two years for the lean-fed dogs.

MY DOG WILL LIVE 2 YEARS LONGER? I LOVE MY DOG – I WANT THAT!!!!

Make sure you take a look at your small business marketing, are you selling steak or sizzle? Have a non-industry friend look at your marketing, see if they would be excited to buy you product if they didn’t know you! Post your link on Facebook and ask your online friends if they would buy it. DO NOT be sad if you get criticism – just take that and fix it!

If you would like me and my readers to take a peek at your info and be blatantly honest, add a link here and we will all help (beat up on you)!

Great (and not so great) Customer Service

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:56:44 +0000

So I have been switching over to a new credit card and shopping cart system. Sigh. The process is horrendous and I keep finding new things I have to fix. We have to transfer people from our old database, we have to get all our people to re-optin (Tammy Mac this means you…:) We have to set up forms and autoresponders and other terrible things. I have been on hold with customer service for what seems like days!

The bright spot in all of this is the great guys over at 1shoppingcart.com. Today I talked to Andy who did everything he could to help fix a form for me (I am still working on getting it to look right BUT he really tried!!). I also tend to get Mark a lot when I call – I am SERIOUS, it has been over 20 times in the last two weeks. He is VERY patient and knows A LOT about the product.

Having chosen a vendor, I have definitely had my decision reinforced that it was a good one. Great customer service is NOT the norm these days so you find it, treasure it!

That having been said, I have also had terrible customer service lately.

Adobe. A HUGE company that just got $643 from me for a software update has terrible customer service. The customer service rep I spoke with had no knowledge of the english language. He put me on hold for over 10 minutes to try and find a form that I needed to have emailed to me and never sent the form. He was rude. I am sorry I have to use Adobe. NOT a good experience.

Discover Card sold me out. I have a merchant account with Bank of America now (it is going away soon!). BOA has a terrible back end system that is impossible to reconcile, making my accountant sad BUT that is not why I am so glad to be leaving them! I opted to have Discover offered as one of the credit cards I accepted. No fewer than 8 different “Discover Partners” have called me offering services for “free”. They are not free, they just want me to sign up for a service for free for a little bit and then start charging me when I forget to cancel. Double sigh. I have told them I do not need a website or promotions or anything else but they still call. I hate Discover now.

This is not rocket science. Having a company culture that rewards customer service is vital. Letting your customers know that you will not sell their name should be standard. Having someone answer your phone with a cheerful hello costs exactly the same amount as having a surly receptionist.

It all starts at the top. If you are a small business owner with no employees, take a look at how you are operating. If you are a small business owner with a staff, talk to them tomorrow about what they can do to make your customers happy.

Happy is good. Hate is bad.