How To Win Over More Customers

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | Entrepreneurship | Marketing and Sales | How To Win Over More CustomersIf you want to run a profitable company and keep your business around for years to come, then you’ll need to work on winning over more customers. Without clients, you risk sales dipping and your business having to shut its doors.

Luckily, there are steps you can take to help you grab the attention of potential prospects and customers. You can’t sit around waiting for people to flock to you and figure out what you’re all about. Instead, you need to be proactive and figure out a game plan for attracting individuals who are likely to purchase your products or services.

Define Your Target Market

Trying to get in touch with everyone out there and not having a strategic plan of action for who you want to connect with will likely backfire. While it’s easier to send out mass messages, it’s not going to help you win over the right type of client. Instead, take time to define your target market and figure out what your ideal customer looks like. For example:

  • What are their interests or hobbies?
  • Where do they spend their time?
  • What are their demographics?

These are just a few key questions you should be asking yourself as you outline the specifics about your target audience. It will help you to narrow down who exactly you should be getting in front of both online and offline and the best times and places to do so.

Perfect Your Presentation Skills

You can also win over more customers by perfecting your presentation and sales skills. It’s a wise idea to attend workshops dedicated to helping you feel more comfortable and confident speaking in front of other people. A lot of times you’ll be called upon to give sales presentations and attend meetings where you’re going to have to try and get the customer to buy what you’re selling. The more you practice and improve your skills in this area, the easier it’s going to be for you to present the information without getting flustered.

Increase Your Marketing Efforts

A tried and true way to win over more customers is to increase and expand your marketing efforts. It could be that you’re simply not investing enough time and money in this area to have it make a difference in your sales numbers. Create a strategic plan that incorporates both online and offline marketing campaigns and helps to share your value proposition and reasons as to why someone would want to do business with you. The more creative you are, the more likely it is that your target audience will notice what you’re doing and will want to take further action.

Get Involved in Your Community

Another way to win over more customers is to get involved in your community. You can do this either by sponsoring local events or signing up to help out with charity causes. There’s likely a lot going on right in your own neighborhood, but you have to be willing to reach out and get involved. It is an excellent way to meet new people and introduce them to who you are and what your business does. People tend to gravitate toward companies and business owners who are willing to give back and show their local communities some love. Donating to specific causes and volunteering your time are also excellent ways to show your area some support and get individuals to notice what you’re doing.

Launch A Blog

An easy and effective way to bring in more customers is to post relevant and timely information through a blog. Many people find reading articles a great use of time and will want to know more about your business if you’re continually sharing interesting blog posts through your website. You may also be able to win over more customers by writing intriguing articles and then having other people share them with their networks online. If you want your blog to be successful be sure you post consistently, review it for errors and respond to comments and questions in a timely manner.

Get Current Customers Talking & Sharing

Win over more customers by getting people talking and sharing about your business. Maybe it’s that you run a special promotion or discount or a lead referral program to help you achieve this goal. On the other hand, perhaps you use humor or an element of surprise to attract customers and get people discussing your business with others. Also, the better customer service you offer, the more likely it is that satisfied clients will share their experience with their friends and family and help you draw in more paying customers.

Use Online Reviews

You can also win over more customers by collecting, posting and promoting online reviews and testimonials. The best way to get customers interested in what you’re doing and your business is to get other people to talk about you. Consumers trust reviews and feedback from other consumers versus hearing about how great a company it is from the company itself. Be sure to respond to any negative reviews so that the public sees that you’re aware of any issues and are working hard to resolve them. Include testimonials on your website from real clients and let your service speak for itself. Having a lot of positive reviews and testimonials will certainly help you attract more customers to your business and make people feel compelled to learn more about what it is you do.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, just because you launch a company doesn’t mean you’re going to attract new business automatically. You have to be willing to implement these ideas outlined above if you wish to win over more customers and increase your sales. It’s going to take an extra effort on your part but know that your hard work and dedication will pay off in the long run and you’ll have a thriving business to manage. Give these ideas a try and see what works best for you and continue to do more of that going forward.

Promoting Your Business like a Pro: 5 Press Release Writing Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Writing a Press Release|Promoting Your Business like a Pro: 5 Press Release Writing Mistakes to Avoid at All CostsA well written press release can earn plenty of valuable exposure for a business or other organization. Unfortunately, many press releases feature faults that make them less effective than they could be. Recognizing and avoiding the most common mistakes, however, is easy enough that it should never be a problem.

A Well Established Tool With Plenty of Uses

The first press release was written in 1906 to alert news organizations about a deadly accident on the Pennsylvania Railroad. It quickly became clear to journalists and others that this novel form of communication could be used for many productive purposes.
Today, businesses of all kinds rely on releases originating from Violet PR and similar agencies to get the word out about important news. A properly formulated press release can make work a lot easier for journalists and thereby improve the odds that a story will be published.

Five Press Release Mistakes the Pros Never Make

At the same time, journalism professionals get bombarded with so many releases that they have learned to be choosy. Only fairly high quality press releases have a chance of breaking through and garnering the attention that businesses hope for.

Fortunately, the kinds of mistakes that are most likely to doom a press release are easy enough to avoid. Some of the issues that are most likely to get a press release buried instead of noticed are:

  • Weak headlines. A journalist tasked with looking through dozens of press releases every day is not likely to spend much time on each, on average. A press release’s headline is its most important asset and should always be treated as such. Concise, informative headlines that make the main point clearly are always the best.
  • Excessive informality. Some press releases try to get too cute in an effort to stand out from the rest. Journalists are more likely to take notice of releases that stay neutral and impartial. It is generally better to err a bit on the side of stiffness than to indulge in informality when writing a press release.
  • Too much fluff. Journalism is about conveying information efficiently and effectively. Press releases that are filled with fluff make the work of journalists more difficult. Generally speaking, it will always be best to stick to the most important facts.
  • Overly promotional tone. Businesses most often issue press releases to spread positive news. That said, whatever positivity a release conveys ought to stem from the facts themselves. Press releases that are overtly promotional tend to put journalists off.
  • A lack of quotes. The idea behind the press release is to make it easy for a journalist to put a story together. Releases that lack quotes force writers to do more work than necessary. While not every press release needs a quote from a CEO, analyst, or other figure, many benefit from having them.

Almost Anyone Can Write a Press Release

Mistakes like these undermine the effectiveness of many press releases. At the same time, just about anyone who is at all comfortable with writing can put together a release that will be taken seriously.

All that it takes to do so, in the end, is to recognize the intended audience for a press release and to account for it. Since the idea behind a press release is to persuade journalists to write a desired story, keeping that fact in mind should make things fairly simple.

The Prospecting Paradox: Maximizing the Passive

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Sales Prospecting|The Prospecting Paradox: Maximizing the PassiveMost salespeople who need to prospect for a living will tell you that it’s a very proactive, immediate results-driven exercise that can be uncomfortable at times. Hard to disagree with that. This is a topic that we get involved with far too often as it’s a common point of frustration for many business owners and sales leaders regarding their selling culture. As we all know, with uncomfortableness comes excuses. Many salespeople also have what we call ‘headtrash’ about prospecting. Headtrash is the thoughts we have that affect our behavior with zero evidence that those thoughts are true. For example, “I can’t call that owner, they’re to busy for me now,” or “I’m going to bother them,” or “They don’t need what we sell.” I could go on and on about this topic. Unfortunately, it’s the slow death of many salespeople because it stifles their behavior.

The Issue

When salespeople have a behavioral problem, they will always have a technique problem. If they have a technique problem it doesn’t necessarily mean they have a behavioral issue, but behavioral issues always lead to technique issues. If you don’t practice golfing, you’re not going to be a good golfer. It’s that simple. Fortunately, salespeople have the ability to eliminate one of those two issues by doing their daily prospecting behaviors. Yes, you read that right, daily prospecting behaviors. Most salespeople prospect for job preservation. Things aren’t happening in the manner they’d like so they prospect a lot some of the time rather than a little all the time. Big difference. In my experience, the most effective business development people engage in two types of prospecting behaviors: Active and Passive. Active prospecting is what salespeople define as typical prospecting actions such as cold calling, walk ins, meeting people at networking events. The results are usually immediate, yes or no for continuing the discussion. Passive prospecting is like fishing. We cast our lines out and wait to see what bites. The two common activities for this type of business development are prospecting via email and asking for introductions to prospects you’d like to meet that you have common connections with. In LinkedIn speak, this would be a 2nd Connection.

Prospecting Tip: Leverage the Passive

I like to share with our team that a good passive prospecting goal is to send out 10 emails each working morning to prospects they’d like to meet and/or to ask for an introduction from other people they know well to someone they want to meet. If the average person works 250 days per year, that’s 2,500 passive prospecting emails that are sent that otherwise wouldn’t be sent. Trust when I say, as a witness myself, this flat out works!

The Goal

Create for yourself what we like to call a behavioral cookbook. What’s in a cookbook? Recipes. When the instructions for a recipe are followed exactly, it creates a predictable outcome. In the prospecting world, a cookbook is a recipe of prospecting behaviors, both active and passive, that lead to a predictable outcome. How does one know it’s predictable? Because it’s been followed and tweaked until the desired finished product (outcome) is achieved. Quite simply, it’s been battle tested. It’s critical to have a goal for a particular behavior as well as tracking towards the goal. You must do both! Have a goal and track the activity that leads to goal attainment in order to fine tune for success. Activity ALWAYS precedes outcome!

Losing hurts more than winning feels good so get comfortable being uncomfortable and proactively create the business life you want by actively and passively prospecting the smart way!

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Mike Jones | The Prospecting Paradox: Maximizing the PassiveMike Jones is co-author, with Ken Guest, of Digital Prospecting: Finding, Nurturing and Closing Sales with Social Technologies, and the owner of The Ruby Group, a licensed Sandler Training center. He has deep personal experience in manufacturing and logistics, and in many other industries, notably professional services.

For more information, please visit www.sandler.com

 

The Secret Recipe For Successful Client Meetings

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Client Meetings|The Secret Recipe For Successful Client MeetingsClient meetings are a vital part of the business process and if you don’t know how to conduct them properly, you’re going to struggle to close deals and bring in revenue. But holding the perfect client meeting is a difficult thing to do and a lot of business leaders get it wrong. If you’re not closing deals, you’re wasting your time and not seeing any return on that investment. When that starts happening a lot, your business is going to end up in a lot of trouble. To stop that from happening, you just need to follow this recipe for the perfect client meeting.

Research

First off, you need to conduct good research into the client before you meet them. They’re coming to meet with you to determine whether your business can meet their needs and it’s important that you can demonstrate that to them effectively if you’re going to close the sale. You’re never going to be able to do that if you don’t understand those needs in the first place. That’s why you need to research the company and get to know their specific needs inside out. That way, you can tailor a pitch to the client and they’ll be more likely to do business with you. It’s also a good idea to do a bit of research into the particular people that you’re meeting with so you can get a sense of how they like to do business. This will help you to direct the other aspects of the meeting like location and business etiquette.

Location

The next step is the location and this often depends on the client. Some clients like to see exactly what you’ve got to offer, which is why you should meet with them in your office. However, a lot of business leaders shoot themselves in the foot because their office sends the wrong message and puts clients off because it’s outdated and not well maintained. If you find that clients have a negative reaction to the office, it’s worth paying for renovation services to give it a bit of a facelift. They’re making a judgment about your business as soon as they set foot in the door so you need to make sure you give a good first impression.

Listen To Clients

This is a meeting, not a presentation, but a lot of people forget that. If you go in, do your pitch, and then expect them to make a deal without really listening to the client properly, you’re not going to get very far. Make sure that you’re listening to their wants and needs and you take them on board when offering them a deal, otherwise, they won’t go for it.

Next Steps

This is by far the most important thing to remember because if you don’t end the meeting by outlining next steps, you’re never going to close a deal. Before you leave, decide how you’re going to move forward whether that’s by sending them a quote, setting up a further meeting or closing the deal.

If you follow this secret recipe, your client meetings will go smoothly every time and you’ll close a lot more deals.

The Strategy Driven Guide to Improving Your Digital Marketing

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Digital Marketing|The Strategy Driven Guide to Improving Your Digital MarketingDigital marketing can be a difficult beast to master. Not only do you have changes made to the technology, trends have never come and gone so fast. More has changed in the last 2 years of marketing than the previous 50, and it’s all thanks to technology, technology integration, and globalization. You have the opportunity to build a true global community for your brand, but only if you work out a solid digital marketing strategy.

The key to a successful digital marketing strategy is to use multiple avenues. The digital world is incredibly connected, and so too should the channels you use and your strategies. Your home page needs to be optimized to make best use of your PPC marketing campaign. Your influencer marketing must coincide with your social media marketing and sales, and so on.

Improving your digital marketing strategy can only be done if you focus on all these key areas:

Optimize Your Website

The first step to improving your entire digital marketing strategy is to improve your website as a whole. This means revamping it so that it is a breeze to use, is beautiful, secure, and the home page is compelling. You want people to go through your website and to either hire your services or buy your products as a result.

To optimize your site you will first want to audit it. Go through and make sure that all the content is up to date, fresh, optimized for search engines, is fun, and reflects your brand. You will also want to check links to make sure they all work and that no page is “lost” – or, in other words, cannot be accessed to via a page link.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO applies to all aspects of your digital marketing strategy. You will want to optimize your on-site content for search engines, you will want to improve your back link profile, and so on. SEO can be a mystery to many business owners, which is why it is best to hire a digital marketing agency that specializes in SEO from the start.

Pay Per Click Marketing

SEO can help you raise the ranks within Google. PPC marketing can put you right at the top. That being said you want to be very careful when it comes to which keywords you use and invest in. The more specific the keyword, the better, but you don’t want to overdo it. You want to instead conduct keyword research so that you make the most out of your budget.

When creating a PPC strategy it is important to remember your home page. Create a call to action that reflects the keyword or keywords you have chosen for your PPC campaign. If you are paying to be at the top of results for “gardening supplies” and you are an outdoor landscaping company, you will want to put gardening supplies offers right at the top of your site. Otherwise users will click away.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is powerful for building up a community. Any company type can benefit from this, even manufacturing businesses. On social media you want to:

  • Post high quality photos
  • Be genuine
  • Be informative
  • Be engaging

This means not only do you need to worry about your own content, you need to respond to messages, reply, and interact with the community you are building as a whole.

PR Marketing

Public Relations marketing refers to contacting media and influencers with the hope that they will give you free publicity as part of their story. PR marketing and SEO go hand-in-hand. To be successful in this you will want to only contact relevant parties. If you are a gardening business, contact gardening magazines. If you are a local boutique or café, contact local travel magazines or local newspapers.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has greatly changed in recent years. Instagram models with hundreds if not millions of followers have failed companies, and for one simple reason: they are unauthentic. Most of them have fake followers, and even if they are genuine followers, chances are they will never be able to be as engaged as a micro influencer.

Micro influencers often have 10,000 or less followers. They are notable because they are active in their community. They build up real relationships and engage in authentic and genuine ways. This engagement builds trust between them and their followers, so when they use and review your product, you can bet that their followers will trust their word and even consider buying your product for themselves.

Collaborative Marketing

Collaborative marketing is similar to influencer marketing. Smaller brands that really work in building an engaged community are the perfect partners. The difference is that you both work together to offer a combined service or a special product line to your followers.

What to Remember

The key to any successful strategy is to keep updating it. Try new things, see what works, and remember that past success does not guarantee future success. Trends, values, and news will all change over time, and your digital marketing strategy must reflect this.

Take single use plastic as an example. Just a few years ago no one was talking about it. Today, it has become such a contentious issue with citizens and consumers around the world that government after government are banning it.

You need to stay up to date with what the public wants from their companies, and change accordingly. Take fast food chains, for example. Previously it would have been unheard of for them to serve vegan options, and yet, the number of vegans is only growing in popularity. Today even brands like Burger King offer a vegan burger. Due to the spices and unique taste, they are a huge hit with vegans and non-vegans alike.

Keeping your ear to the ground in this way can help you get on top of trends and be a real leader in your industry. Combine this forward-thinking with a solid marketing strategy, and you will have crafted a recipe for success.