Before I started my marketing business, I worked in sales and had the opportunity to work with a great man. He was our regional sales manager and gave really good advice that helped me improve my sales.
There are two valuable lessons learnt that I apply in my marketing strategy today:
Build your pipeline
When you are driving in your car you don’t look at the road directly in front of you. You are looking in the distance to see what is happening on the road. It’s the same with your sales. When you are working on your sales you are building a pipeline of warm leads that will convert over time. You need to get enough leads and quotes in now to convert sales over time.
Be consistent and persistent
Keeping top of mind and consistent communication with your leads brings sales. For your leads to convert you need to have a proper follow up system and keep in touch with your leads on a regular basis.
We used to have a system where we would speak to new inquiries every day and follow up once a week with pending deals. We did this every week and we kept in contact and closed more deals.
The reason why some businesses fail and others thrive is to do with the systems that they use. If you have a proper system set up to generate leads coming in every day you build a pipeline. As you reach out consistently to your leads they convert into clients.
Why it’s important to build your email audience
Marketing online involves connecting with new leads every day. Whether it’s on Facebook, Linkedin, through your website or on email. These leads all require a system where you can communicate with them. If you don’t keep top of mind, how will your leads remember you?
If you have been reading my blogs you will notice I speak about a “holistic marketing” plan quite often. For your marketing to work you need to use every platform together for a common goal.
Email marketing’s function in your plan is converting leads to sales. You can use emails to drive traffic to your website sales pages and convert cold leads into ready to buy hot leads.
To make your email system work you need to have 2 elements:
A platform that hosts email subscribers. You then create a strategic plan to send emails over a period of time. Once you have your content you can set the emails up to run on automation. This will deliver all your emails to new subscribers on a set schedule. The plan of the system is to convert your new subscribers into interested clients.
Marketing campaigns driving subscribers. You need to have a strategy to contact people daily and get them to subscribe to your email list. This builds your pipeline of new prospects. You can use various campaigns like email marketing, targeted sms or Facebook campaigns. Any person that you speak to or visits your business should subscribe as well.
This is how all the major successful online businesses work their leads. I have taken a Facebook mastery course and professional linkedin selling course. Both teach the same end game strategy. You only drive sales messages to your email audience.
Your email system provides you with an investment that you can use over and over to generate business.
Think about it when you run a direct marketing campaign you have one shot to convert an audience to a sale. If they didn’t respond to your sales pitch then your return will be poor. You will have very few contacts and your cost to find a client will be too expensive.
When you pitch to the market for subscribers it’s different. You are making a request for a connection with no sales pressure. All of a sudden more people, other than just the impulsive buyers are listening. You now have an opportunity to connect with more people which will reduce your cost per lead. There is also the opportunity for you to pitch unlimited sales pitches. If they don’t resonate with this week’s message, you can use a different pitch next week. So you basically have an unlimited opportunity to convert your subscriber to a client.
Your email audience is in my opinion your most valuable marketing asset. Facebook can shut down your page at any time. Google can restrict your business marketing. But your email audience is your business audience to keep.
No matter how you generate your leads, you need to have an email marketing system for conversions. If your lead conversions are low and you don’t use email marketing you know why. It’s the missing link you need in your plan.
Email lead generation system
I understand setting up an email system that converts is difficult. You need to understand sales copy, what emails to send when and how to drive traffic to your website. What even makes it more complicated is you need to be relevant in your marketing. This is where psycho graphic targeting and setting up data points in your mailing list can help.
These are all aspects that you would need to learn and understand how to apply them for success.
To help further clients succeed at email marketing, we have developed a plan. We have now created an email audience builder package that will allow you to leverage our experience in your business.
What it includes:
Opt in email system (Popia compliant)
1. Email system setup
2. A Landing page to collect subscribers for your business
3. 4 x strategic emails leading up to conversion
Email awareness campaign
You can select from either of our targeted email campaigns to generate subscribers.
Check out our promotion page for further details of our launch promotion