As the country slips into a recession more and more
Generating Leads for Your Business - Know your Numbers
October 8, 2008 – 12:13 pm
I met with a new client last week to talk about how he could generate leads and I was amazed at how little he knew about how much money he was spending to get a lead and convert the lead to a customer. I was also amazed at the process his company used to track leads (none). Here are some tips for finding leads and tracking those leads.
In my opinion, the most important part of lead generation is having an easy to use automated system. That means having a easy system to track leads and as importantly an easy way to market to those leads.
Do you know your clearly customers
October 7, 2008 – 8:19 am
One of the hats I wear is as a consultant to businesses that are looking to use the Internet to find leads and customers. We recently got a new customer on a lead generation strategy on the Internet. This is a rather large internation company (Can’t even say the industry becasue they may see this post) and as usual I asked my normal questions.
- Who is a lead?
- What is a prospect?
- What is a qualified lead?
- How are leads moved to a buy?
and to my surprise I got this response. “We don’t know”.
I must admit I was floored. How can you find a lead if you don’t know what a lead is. Now mind you this is a large business (+$200 mil in sales) and their marketing department couldn’t define a lead, a qualified lead or an ideal customer. No wonder they are getting creamed in the marketplace.
If you own a business (my passion is small business) then you MUST define your ideal customer or client. Define what they look like (demographics) and what they want (Psychographics) as clearly as possible. Just the definition could help your business tremendously.
Dedicated to your success.
Avoid Financial Disaster, Leverage YOUR Business’s Social Network
October 6, 2008 – 2:08 pm
Will your business face “Financial Disaster” For the first time in 4 years the DOW is below 10,000 and the world seems to be in financial panic.
So the question is “How do you avoid Financial Disaster?” How to do ensure that your business will prosper in these tough economic times.
A couple of posts ago I talked about using your existing social network. You know the customers that have decided they trust you enough to spend money with your business. Well these people, current customers could save you and your business from Financial Disaster.
How, using your relationship with those customers. These customers, clients know and trust your business. They have decided that their hard earned dollars are best spent with you when the want or need the product or service you sell.
So why not capitalize on them. What you say “I have no relationship!!!!” Well it’s time to start building one.
The reason many business owners can’t leverage their existing customer base as it turns out is many business owners don’t even know who these clients or customers are. Many don’t have any systematic way to stay in touch so they can’t leverage them. Many business owners never even talk to this powerful network, never even ask them what they want.
Well starting today, if you want to avoid “financial disaster” start talking to the 20% of your customers that provide most of your business, find out what else they want or need and sell it to them. Just that could save your financial hide.
Dedicated to your success….
Same search term for Google - Different Results in two different Browsers
September 30, 2008 – 1:37 pm
Ok, I heard about this but never eperienced it. I searched for the term “Christ Church” and got to different SERPs from two different browsers. Any SEO guys got any ideas.
I searched the exact same term in both Safari and Firefox. In the Safari browser “Christ Church Nashville” is listed first in the FireFox browser “Christ Church Philadelphia” is listed first.
Any smart SEO guys want to weigh in I am listening. Also notice the other results are not the same. Looking for comments.
Safari Example
Firefox Example
You already have a Social Network.. Just use it
September 30, 2008 – 8:57 am
Are you using your businesses “social network”? Not the online social network like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc but your businesses social network? Do you even know what your Businesses Social Network is and who is in it?
Well lets define “Social Networks”. I checked some definitions on the web and here is a list of definitions of social networks none of which has anything to do with computers
- The personal or professional set of relationships between individuals
- The extent to which individuals or groups are connected to or isolated from others, family, friends, work colleagues or schoolmates
- a social structure made of individuals or organizations that are connected through various familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close relationships
When you read these definitions they have nothing to do with computers. Social networks have existed for years and they live in your business.
This is no great mystery folks, every business that has customers, clients etc has a social network, you may not be using it but your businesses social network is the people that have evalutated your product or service and trust your business enough to spend their hard earned dollars with you. That is your businesses social network.
So you have a social network if you have clients or customers the question is are you using that network?
Dedicated to your business success
Next post - How to use your businesses social network.
What are Automated Leads… and How Do I Create a Lead Gen System
May 20, 2008 – 2:14 pm
I recently was talking to a prospect about his business. I love talking to folks about their businesses because I get learn about their successes and their failures. This prospect is a financial planner so we talked about how he found new customers and he admitted that he had no organized way to gather, store and nurture new leads. (I was not surprised because many business owners don’t have a system). So I asked him how he found new customers. His response “By luck”.
Now in my mind this was crazy but he went on to explain that his business had thrived for years with this tactic and until recently he had not thought about changing it. We talked further and I suggested he may want to consider creating an automated lead gen system that finds, stores and nurtures clients until they are ready to buy. Here is my non technical criteria for creating a system
- Easily implemented across the entire sales process. Sales has many steps and any system created needs to integrate and be easily implemented in every step of the process. Actually any system must seamless integrate and not imped the sales process.
- Automated. Any system must allow for the following steps to be done and must be completely automated including
- Find new leads. - The system automatically find new leads once it’s created using your existing advertising methods
- Store - All leads and lead data needs to be stored in an easily accessible way.
- Nurture - Sales and Marketing is a process. The process starts by gathering leads but those leads have to be nurtured basically your system needs to automatically communicate with your leads and move them down the buying cycle.
- Easily added on to whatever you’re doing now - the system you create must easily integrate into your existing systems, so there is no (or little) disruption in your business.
What is Twitter and how can you use it for Business
May 20, 2008 – 1:20 pm
I just recently got the Twitter bug (http://www.twitter.com/dwightmiller) and I’ve had many people ask how Twitter works and what’s it’s purpose. To help explain Twitter, I found this video and in my next post I’ll tell you if I’ve found any use for it in business.
What is Social Bookmarking
March 31, 2008 – 6:03 pm
Again, I am using these videos to help me understand these new social networking sites. Last post was social networking, today social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is a way to organize the websites you love. From a business perspective if you customers bookmark your sites, your site gets rewarded with more external links and your page rank increases. In a few days I’ll talk about strategies for encouraing your clients to bookmark your site but in the mean time discover social bookmarking.
What is a Social Network
March 29, 2008 – 5:55 pm
I am preparing a speeh about social networking in a few weeks and I wanted to start writing about social networks. This video does a good job of explaining how social networks work.