Every Thursday, right on time for your coffee break, we will give you a quick dose of “marketing caffeine” to uplevel your marketing and in turn uplevel the results you are seeing at your business.
YOUR CUP OF THIS WEEK’S STRONGEST MARKETING TIP
Lead Handling
There are lots of ways to produce leads. The easiest way is to deploy a paid traffic campaign and throw financial resources at it.
Where I see most companies and businesses falter is how they handle the lead both in the speed, scripting and follow up techniques.
First, care to guess how quickly you should be following up to a new lead that comes in? Minutes. When a lead comes in, in a perfect world you are on the phone with that lead within minutes, not hours and surely not days.
Second, you need to make sure that whoever is handling these calls has a sample script to work from. For everyone that we work with we track and record calls. This allows us to listen to calls and provide feedback to the team. It is shocking how poor some of these calls are. Simple questions can’t be answered and the caller leaves underwhelmed and the lead is essentially deemed lost.
Finally, the touch points. Not everyone is going to convert on the first call or the first try. You need to get some automated systems and processes in place to be sending the lead mails, text messages, physical mail and follow up multiple times. Remember it takes numerous touch points to get that lead into a state where they are ready to buy.
Leads are often not the problem. The handling and follow up of the leads is the area that needs the most work.
WHAT SHOULD BE ON YOUR READING MENU OVER THE WEEKEND
Outrageous Marketing Campaigns
While I am a digital marketer at heart, I use direct mail on a regular basis. Many marketers have said the days of direct mail are dead, I beg to differ and have the data to back it up.
Everything is a numbers game. For example: If you send out 1000 pieces, expect your replies to be in the 1-3% range.
There is a way to get these numbers up, and that is to go guerrilla. Think outside the box with the way you craft and send your direct mail pieces – hand addressing being one simple example.
Outrageous Marketing Campaigns is action packed with multi-step campaigns and dozens of ideas for new direct mail campaigns that will drive results.
SHORT READ, JUST LIKE YOUR ESPRESSO CUP
What is inbound marketing?
I will be the first to admit that I favor outbound marketing versus inbound marketing. We send thousands of emails, thousands of LinkedIn requests and thousands of direct mail pieces (among other things) on a regular basis. All of these activities are considered outbound. You are sending something out aiming to elicit a response.
The totally opposite approach is inbound marketing. As the name suggests these are people that are coming to you. Versus you going out and trying to find them, and get them to raise their hand.
Hubspot is considered the king when it comes to inbound marketing. Here is a quick read to get you a bit more up to speed on all things inbound.
Learn more about inbound marketing here.
For the first time in a while, I am moving more of my personal marketing activities to be a bit more balanced between inbound and outbound.
POWERFUL TOOL TO MAKE YOUR MARKETING A PIECE OF CAKE
Google Sheets
From basic data collecting to generating complex reports, Google Sheets is the best tool to keep you organized.
One of the additions Google added to the sheets in April was to automate repetitive steps by recording them and running the script in different sheets. Thanks to the record macro option, you can now save hours of work.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
I never could have done what I have done without the habit to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
-Charles Dickens
NO JOKE FUN FACT
We don’t refer to the people we work with as clients, rather we refer to them as members. There is this strange client / vendor relationship connotation and candidly it’s just not our thing or the way we like to operate. We really never see the people we work with as clients. We see them more as a member of the No Joke Marketing Family.
The language they use on the American Express Card: “Member Since”.
Often ideas and inspiration are in plain sight right in front of you.
READ THIS POST AS AN INFOGRAPHIC
