Are you doing enough to stand out from the crowd? (Photo by talk2frank)
Over the past few years, a lot has changed with direct email. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 laid out enforceable rules for content, sending email, and unsubscribing from lists; more lists became available for purchase; and email became the marketing tool of choice for many firms.
One thing that hasn’t changed, notes Eric Rudolf, is the quality of email. Businesses continue to make the same direct email mistakes that they were making a decade ago, he says in this week’s article, 5 Rules for an Effective Direct Email Marketing Campaign. They write bad subject lines, don’t put the important information in effective places, and bombard subscribers with too many email messages—among other things. All of those factors lead to receivers automatically deleting email, not to mention wasted time and money.
Email done well can be an effective tool for nurturing leads. You can update prospects with information about your services and send prospects articles and other resources to help them with issues they’re dealing with. But the most important things you need when nurturing leads and trying to turn prospects into clients is patience and persistence.
You must be willing to pursue the relationship; do not give up easily, says Peter Bregman in his article, The Key to Becoming a Sales Star (It May Surprise You). Prospects push back, cancel meetings, and reject proposals. The key is to stay the course and continue to reach out to them. The more you do it—just like anything in life—the better you will get.
Don’t Push
Bregman’s advice is similar to what Jill Konrath advises new sellers in her article, Sales Basics: Top 5 Tips for New Sellers, particularly her tip to slow down to speed up sales. Do not be too eager to close sales quickly, for if you try to rush things, your prospects will become more resistant. “When I learned to slow down, parcel information out over multiple meetings, and simply advance the sales process one step at a time, suddenly my sales increased,” Konrath says.
You can speed up the sales cycle slightly with effective search engine marketing, points out Mike Cooch in his podcast interview, How Search Engine Marketing Can Improve the Sales Cycle. That’s because when you do that well, you don’t have to take as much time to educate prospects about the services you offer or sometimes even what it’s like to work with you. Prospects already have that information. When you have a strong online presence that includes quality content (articles, podcasts, and video), case studies, descriptions of services, social media, and paid search engine ads, prospects are prepared to talk about the details of how you can help them, Cooch says.
In fact, those are many of the things buyers look for on a firm’s website, according to a recent RainToday survey. They want the staples, but you need to give them the extras if you want to stand out.
You can also take some of the content on your website and create booklets or downloadable PDF documents with them. Nancy Juetten, founder of Main Street Media, did that, and her booklets quickly became a hit, as she says in this week’s case study, PR Maven Turns Free Services into a Six-Figure Business. The booklets feature a collection of tips and are sold during her speaking engagements. Those who buy the booklets, she says, often engage her services.
Recognizing that people learn in different ways, Juetten also reaches out to people using various media. She created audio files and a live workshop, and she launched a blog. As a result of these efforts, Main Street Media has become a six-figure firm and brought in as much revenue in 2009 as it did in 2008, a time when many firms saw revenue drop. It clearly found a way to stand out in an ever-growing crowd.
