Here are 10 ideas to help you get more clients and grow your local business marketing company.
1. Call Up Yellow Pages Advertisers
Check out your local Yellow Pages and see who has the largest display ads in there. Call them up and ask them how their advertising is working for them lately and whether they would be interested in doubling their sales using SEO and social media traffic tactics.
And, of course, you can find advertisers in magazines, newspapers, local newspapers, trade magazines, newsletters, direct mail sent, classified ads, posters and banners, and so on.
Remember to use the consultative selling approach—ask your prospects questions, let them tell you what they want and then sell that to them!
2. Find Facebook Pages That Have Very Few Fans
Sam Bakker recommends the following simple strategy: Find businesses that have Facebook pages but that have very few fans. Then contact them and explain that you can help them get their social media and Internet marketing campaign back on track, generating thousands of fans and leads for their business.
The fact that they have a presence on Facebook demonstrates that they are interested in doing social media, and the fact that they don’t have many fans demonstrates that they don’t really know what they’re doing and they need your help.
Check out the website www.socialbakers.com/facebook-pages, which shows you how 1.5 million Facebook fan pages are performing, in 200 different countries! This is a great tool for identifying underperforming fan pages in a specific country.
3. Network! Go Meet Businesspeople and Tell Them What You Do
This is probably the fastest and most effective way to get clients when you are getting started. Attend business and networking events, join LinkedIn, spend time at places where businesspeople hang out, and when they ask you, “So what do you do?” casually mention that you specialize in helping businesses double their sales within 90 days using SEO and social media marketing.
As I mentioned earlier, simply renting a car, renting a luxury holiday property, getting a haircut, buying some wine, or getting some sushi can provide you with an opportunity to get a new client!
Marketing expert, copywriter, and author Dan Kennedy tells the story of being on a flight to Europe, sitting in first class surrounded by businesspeople. When the gentleman sitting next to him asked him what he did, Dan quipped quite loudly, “I help business owners triple their sales thanks to effective direct response advertising.” A line of businesspeople formed behind him waiting to speak to him and hire his services!
4. Postcards
As I mentioned earlier, an idea that I liked for picking up new clients comes from one of Kevin Wilke’s students. He uses postcard marketing to attract clients to his new local business marketing service. He creates a list of local businesses in his area and then sends out a simple promotional postcard with his elevator pitch on the card. Here’s what he told me:
“In one month I sent out 125 postcards to local businesses. I got 23 leads, and four clients at $2,000 a month each!”
If you are interested in doing postcard marketing check out www.mypostcardprinting.com (U.S.) or thepostcardcompany.com (U.K.).
5. Sell Gigs on Fiverr.com, and Then Upsell!
As mentioned in Chapter 7, Fiverr.com gets 60 million visitors a month, most of whom are business owners looking for more traffic and exposure for their businesses.
You could task one of your outsourcers to sell your $5 gigs on Fiverr.com (e.g., “I will send five tweets to my 60,000 Twitter followers for you for $5”), and then upsell your Social Media Domination package, for example, or an “I will get you 100,000 Twitter followers for your business for $1,000” type of package.
6. Create a Database of Businesses and Send Them a Free Report
This is something we started doing after picking up a car rental company as a client. I wrote a special report titled “Seven Ways to Double Your Car Rental Business Thanks to Internet Marketing,” including our website and contact details at the end of the report (“Here’s what you can do, but let us do it for you!” was our final message), and then one of my outsourcers created a database of car rental companies for him to send this report to via e-mail and through the post.
Once you’ve created a special report, you can, of course, adapt it to any number of different businesses (car mechanics, plumbers, accountants, financial planners, dentists, orthodontists, chiropractors, massage therapists, cosmetic surgeons, decorators, builders, and so on) and create a database of any one of these specific types of business by finding them on Google or in the Yellow Pages.
7. Give Talks
Many of my students are picking up new clients by giving talks at networking events, evening seminars, property meetings, or even by organizing their own seminars and events.
Become a public speaker and present the benefits of doing SEO and social media marketing, and you will have more clients than you know what to do with.
8. Use LinkedIn
Create an account on LinkedIn.com and start networking online with millions of other business owners.
There are currently more than 141 million LinkedIn users in 200 countries around the world—and a large proportion of them are businesspeople.
9. Do Webinars
Webinars (or web seminars) are usually 90 minutes long, and this technology allows you to have up to 1,000 of your prospects from around the world watch your screen and listen to you in real time. They can even interact with you and ask you questions by typing them into the webinar interface.
This is probably the single most powerful and leveraged way for getting 10 or more clients at a time, without even having to leave your house.
The first time I ran a webinar I got 200 new clients and generated an extra $200,000 in sales in 90 minutes. Find out more about webinars in Chapter 11.
10. Get Referrals
“Why do you want referrals? Because more wealth is created—or lost—through word of mouth than any other single business action known. Yet few businesses have formalized, systematic, and proven referral-generating methods in place,” says marketing consultant Jay Abraham (check out Jay Abraham’s 93 Extraordinary Referral Systems CD course at http://tiny.cc/jay93).
Remember to always ask for a referral after getting your client some phenomenal results, using a request like this:
“I’m glad you’re delighted with the results so far. Is there any other business owner that you know who might be interested in our services? Could you please put us in touch with them?”
To watch 12 of the world’s leading experts explain their marketing strategies live on stage at the Local Business Marketing Summit go to www.laptopmillionaire.tv/lbms.
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