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Ken!
Unleash Your Lead Generation Machine
Copyright © 2006 John Jantsch
Lead generation is a funny thing. It’s the lifeblood of any growing
business, yet many approach it in a casual manner at best.
Consistently generating leads for your business takes momentum and
momentum takes energy.
In my experience, lead generation energy is best created by
effectively approaching your very well defined target market from
several angles, advances and mediums.
Your multi-pronged attack should come just short of making them feel
that you and your business are everywhere they want to go.
One way to accomplish this is through the carefree spending of
bucket loads of money on advertising. It’s an approach that has
actually worked for some, but I don’t recommend it for most small
business owners.
A more effective small business lead generation machine, one that
generates the greatest return on investment, is best created through
the blending of targeted advertising, consistent public relations
and a systematic approach to referrals.
This three prong attack is the stuff that momentum is built on.
Advertising
For most small businesses, direct mail is one of the best ways to
target specific markets. The key to making small business direct
mail, or any form of advertising, work is to use your advertising to
gain marketing permission, before you try to gain a sale.
In other words, focus your advertising message on creating a lead.
Make them an offer of a free report, seminar, evaluation,
newsletter, or other low cost or no cost education message and let
them begin to get to know you through this two step process.
The fact is you can’t really expect a prospect to make a buying
decision about your product or service from the 127 words you can
cram onto a postcard. You can however, get their attention with a
free report that offers them 5,000 words of your expertise. Once
they have consumed that, they will be primed and ready for your
follow-up sales message.
Public relations
PR is a big field but for the sake of this article, I’m talking
about two things – Getting nice articles about your firm in
publications read by your target market and placing expert articles,
written by you, in publications read by your target market.
If you aren’t doing both of these as part of your lead generation
strategy, you are missing the boat.
When a prospect reads an article in a newspaper or magazine it
carries much more credibility than an ad. The fact that someone else
(the publication) thinks that you are great is a very strong
endorsement.
Target the publications you want to appear in and then start to
market to them. Read them, send information and notes to writers on
staff, find out what guidelines they have for guest authors and
start creating some positive PR to go along with your advertising.
Here’s a quick tip. Ask your best clients what publications they
read and rely on the most. This can be a great way to find the best
publications to advertise in as well. Every industry has dozens of
trade publications, but only a few are actually read.
Referrals
It’s a good bet that a large percentage of your business came to you
by referral. Cousin Louie liked what you did for him, so he told two
friends and the rest history.
Referrals are a great way to build a business. Leads that come to
you by way of referral generally cost nothing. Clients that come to
you by way of referral are often your best clients.
Most small businesses get this, but few approach lead generation by
way of referral in a systematic way. And, asking a few people if
they know anybody that needs what you do is not a systematic
referral approach.
Here are the steps in the system:
Target a referral source – this could be your clients, but often the
best referral sources are actually strategic partners that also
serve your ideal target client
Educate your referral source – Create a one page document that your
referral sources can use to introduce what you do, how you do it and
why they should consider having you do it for them. The biggest
potential pitfall of a shoddy referral approach is that you get tons
of leads that aren’t right for you.
Communicate a creative referral marketing offer – If you can create
a game out referral lead generation everyone will want to play.
Reward your referral sources in creative ways. Co-brand powerful
information products and show your strategic partners how to use
them.
Creative referral offers also make great news stories for your PR
program.
Are you starting to get a glimpse of how some of this works
together, builds momentum and creates energy?
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John Jantsch is a marketing coach, author and creator of the Duct
Tape Marketing System. You can get more information about the Duct
Tape System and download your free copy of "How To Grow Your Small
Business Like Crazy by visiting
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com