Home – New › Forums › Marketing mastery › How do we all get more business? – Lets brainstorm!
- This topic is empty.
-
AuthorPosts
-
October 23, 2014 at 5:42 am #989780Up::0
Hello Everyone!
“How do I get more business?”
I’ve seen a question along those lines posted time and time again. So much so I thought maybe a thread which looks to collect everyone’s experiences on what has worked for them and what hasn’t would be helpful.
I’m hoping this thread brings together all our experiences and helps us all find an answer that ever elusive question:
“How do I get more business?”
I’ll start by offering my experiences in the telco market. Let me start by saying the telco market is a very tough nut to crack. I’ve put this down to the fact that all the big boys on the block have made everyone sick and tired of “hearing it all again”. To the point of where I think we now all have an “auto off switch” in our heads that instantly activates the moment we think there is a telco trying to sell us involved.
So with that in mind…
Adwords: Did not work, the cost of customer conversion here for me was in excess of $1000 per customer. And yes I tried it with experts, I had individual landing pages aligned with the ads and with strong call to actions.
SEO: Works and works very well! So much so that I put my together my own internal team for this. Mind you with the recent updates it show some lack in knowledge, so I’m now looking to bring a new up to date expert to help.
Email existing clients: Works very well with our referral program.
Affiliate sites: Lots of work upfront, has not paid of at all, but does not cost a lot to keep open. Have not had a sale from that in over 2 years!
Business Trade Shows: Great source many cold leads (its to easy to walk up and ask a question to kill some time), a few great hots leads. Long conversion times 6 months+.
Word of Mouth, the best: I guess being a small telco that looks after its customers well is where our gold is, this encourages people to talk about us. I think is where all us small business owners can leave the big boys behind!
I hope the above helps
October 24, 2014 at 1:55 am #1173815Up::0I am looking to do more marketing soon and will try and update this post as I learn.
Does anyone else have anything to share?
October 24, 2014 at 4:55 am #1173816Up::0Gizmo, post: 201997 wrote:Hello Everyone!“How do I get more business?”
I’ve seen a question along those lines posted time and time again. So much so I thought maybe a thread which looks to collect everyone’s experiences on what has worked for them and what hasn’t would be helpful.
I’m hoping this thread brings together all our experiences and helps us all find an answer that ever elusive question:
“How do I get more business?”
I’ll start by offering my experiences in the telco market. Let me start by saying the telco market is a very tough nut to crack. I’ve put this down to the fact that all the big boys on the block have made everyone sick and tired of “hearing it all again”. To the point of where I think we now all have an “auto off switch” in our heads that instantly activates the moment we think there is a telco trying to sell us involved.
So with that in mind…
Adwords: Did not work, the cost of customer conversion here for me was in excess of $1000 per customer. And yes I tried it with experts, I had individual landing pages aligned with the ads and with strong call to actions.
SEO: Works and works very well! So much so that I put my together my own internal team for this. Mind you with the recent updates it show some lack in knowledge, so I’m now looking to bring a new up to date expert to help.
Email existing clients: Works very well with our referral program.
Affiliate sites: Lots of work upfront, has not paid of at all, but does not cost a lot to keep open. Have not had a sale from that in over 2 years!
Business Trade Shows: Great source many cold leads (its to easy to walk up and ask a question to kill some time), a few great hots leads. Long conversion times 6 months+.
Word of Mouth, the best: I guess being a small telco that looks after its customers well is where our gold is, this encourages people to talk about us. I think is where all us small business owners can leave the big boys behind!
I hope the above helps
Ah but can you tell what percentage of your business comes from each source.
October 24, 2014 at 5:56 am #1173817Up::0Hello,
Yes, I did that and also considered if the additional spend still resulted in overall growth. I.e. if you are spending more but making more profit overall then its still a good thing even if its not linear growth.
Bert, would you care to share any of your experiences on what worked and what didn’t?
October 24, 2014 at 7:30 am #1173818Up::0One thing I have learnt in recent times is not to waste the business you already have. This is especially true for businesses that suffer the “one time” sale or transaction, and may be constantly in that cycle of “I need to find more customers!”
I know of a lot of high end online marketers that often talk about “funneling” or “marketing funnels”.
Essentially (for those that are unfamiliar with the term) this is where you have a low cost, high value front end offer, that is designed to capture leads, then from there, you push them through a buying cycle.
Sometimes the front end offer, might be a free offer (loss leader)
eg…
free trial > report $300 > transaction $1,500 > additional or large scale transaction $5,000 > ongoing maintenance/care etc $500 per month
Of course this would vary greatly depending upon what type of business you operate.
The concept is to maximise the profitability of your business by upselling, cross selling or downselling customers that you are engaged with.
There’s a saying, “The best customers to have are the ones you’ve already got.”
This is something that I find quite intriguing. I often speak with a lot of business owners that are asking for more traffic, yet they’re wasting the traffic they already have. This is a similar analogy.
This is definitely something I want to implement within my own business for the new year – especially given the industry that I work in, where trust is a big issue.
Engaging the customer easily on the front end, and then re-engaging the customer continuously time and time again, via say, video or email marketing (or podcasting) may hopefully allow me to build a relationship with the client to the point where they feel comfortable working with me.
Then I can provide workable solutions that I may have missed out on otherwise. (especially using the one time sale method)
October 24, 2014 at 7:39 am #1173819Up::0Hi Gizmo,
Internet marketing rules…Rule #1: Get your info in front of potential customers
Rule #2: Talk to your potential clients
Rule #3: Answer their questions and solve their problems
Rule #4: Ask potential customers to do something
Rule #5: Offer them an incentive to act
Rule #6: Monitor results and improve or broaden your activities.I’ve only had the briefest look at the “business” sub-domain of your site so I will have missed a lot and I hope I’m not drawing false conclusions as a result.
Rule #1: Get your info in front of potential customers
You say you have been using SEO for this. Quite frankly I’m having trouble seeing what of value that has been done for you.I can see a bunch of external links (1,200) from a handful of domains (50). If someone has sold you this as SEO, you have been badly misinformed, IMHO? Most of this activity is likely to be a complete waste of time and money!
I see 176 files indexed by Google on this sub-domain of which 107 have been relegated to its supplementary index. Why?
I’m having trouble seeing any…
- SEO strategy
- SE-friendly structure
- SE-friendly design
- SE-friendly content.
A simple check to see if any effective SEO strategy advice has been implemented is to check out location searches and if these are important, to identify their imlementation on a site.
Location searches are important in your industry and you are not targeting Perth or Sydney based searchers. Why is your SEO service ignoring this mission critical strategy?
Rule #2: Talk to your potential clients
I did not see any of this. What I saw was a lot of focus on YOUR SERVICES.You need to talk to a bunch of business categories about their problems and the solutions you can provide.
Rule #3: Answer their questions and solve their problems
This is the SEO implementation of “talk to potential customers”. Different business types will have different telco needs. What about the telco needs of a business with multiple retail outlets, entities with large salesforce remote reporting requirements, businesses that need to upload/download large files, etc.These searchers will pose problem specific questions. Have you got any pages that talk to these individual needs?
Rule #4: Ask potential customers to do something
You have a “call me” button on every page I looked at. Are there other communication methods you can/should offer?Rule #5: Offer them an incentive to act
I did not see any.
There may be incentives for new customers to act and there may be incentives for referrers to act.You have 950 likers on Facebook. What incentive could you offer them to refer your services to firends?
Rule #6: Monitor results and improve or broaden your activities.
There are so many elements that you could/should be monitoring.I hope you are on top of this factor.
I’d be delighted to have a personal chat with you. Please send me a PM if interested.
Regs,
JohnWOctober 24, 2014 at 7:42 am #1173820Up::0Gizmo, post: 202058 wrote:Hello,Yes, I did that and also considered if the additional spend still resulted in overall growth. I.e. if you are spending more but making more profit overall then its still a good thing even if its not linear growth.
Bert, would you care to share any of your experiences on what worked and what didn’t?
guess where I am coming from is there is no point throwing money in one direction and not knowing that is where you additional profits are coming from. Lots of business’s throw money at a marketting approach, but don’t actually monitor where their sales are occuring.
In my case i ask every client, and can track on a percentage basis where my client base has come from, which has changed completely from when I started.
If you don’t know where the client came from you could be wasting money
October 24, 2014 at 8:09 am #1173821Up::0Hello,
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this post.
I’m a little lost though to be honest, in either that what I wrote was not clear or in that what I wrote was not read.
I was trying to create this thread for people to share the experiences with marketing and whats working for them in their businesses.
Don’t get me wrong I do appreciate your feedback and time on analyzing what I have done. However I didn’t want the focus here to be on me asking for help, I’m flattered I got it and did not expect it.
Thanks!Hopefully this post cleared it up. Anyone wanting to share their experiences and what they have learnt?
October 24, 2014 at 8:45 am #1173822Up::0Gizmo, post: 202065 wrote:…what I wrote was not clear or in that what I wrote was not read.I was trying to create this thread for people to share the experiences with marketing and whats working for them in their businesses…
Hopefully this post cleared it up. Anyone wanting to share their experiences and what they have learnt?
Hi Gizmo,
I read your post before I replied. The core question was…“I’m hoping this thread brings together all our experiences and helps us all find an answer to that ever elusive question:‘How do I get more business?‘”
IMHO, there is no single answer to this.
Ive been offering Internet marketing services for nearly 20 years and EVERY situation has been different.
There is no such thing as ONE CORRECT online marketing answer!
The problems with phrasing this sort of question in a forum is that:
a. Most replies are likely to be from the large numbers of people with limited knowedge or experience.b. Many people with a vested interest in one specific area of online marketing will reply. Eg SEOs, SEM consultants, copywriters, etc.
c. The mission critical question you don’t address (and almost everyone ignores) is BUDGET!
Any reply to your question about “what works” that does not address how much time/money was spent to achieve the results MUST be considered an incomplete and therefore irrelevant reply.
Regs,
JohnWOctober 24, 2014 at 9:14 am #1173823Up::0JohnW, post: 202069 wrote:Hi Gizmo,
I read your post before I replied. The core question was…“I’m hoping this thread brings together all our experiences and helps us all find an answer to that ever elusive question:‘How do I get more business?‘”
IMHO, there is no single answer to this.
Ive been offering Internet marketing services for nearly 20 years and EVERY situation has been different.
There is no such thing as ONE CORRECT online marketing answer!
The problems with phrasing this sort of question in a forum is that:
a. Most replies are likely to be from the large numbers of people with limited knowedge or experience.b. Many people with a vested interest in one specific area of online marketing will reply. Eg SEOs, SEM consultants, copywriters, etc.
c. The mission critical question you don’t address (and almost everyone ignores) is BUDGET!
Any reply to your question about “what works” that does not address how much time/money was spent to achieve the results MUST be considered an incomplete and therefore irrelevant reply.
Regs,
JohnWThanks John,
You are 100% correct there is no one correct answer.
I was just interested in hearing peoples stories and expereinces.
I guess the title of the post was wrong, sorry for the confusion.I’m hoping to improve my writing skills soon
October 24, 2014 at 9:52 am #1173824Up::0The biggest question I have these days in what is the most cost effective way to get new business especially if you are a startup where you have a bunch of capital and you want to get the biggest bang for your buck quickly and start getting clients who want your products and services now rather than the old fashion ways such as tele-marketing, cold calling, business networking…..
There must be a way especially with the power of the internet and social media to find people who are looking for what you have to offer and work smarter to have these people come to you and seek you out but do so in a way that isn’t going to send you broke within your first month.
I would be interested to get some ideas from everyone in the group
October 30, 2014 at 3:09 am #1173825Up::0bmcg-amb, post: 202074 wrote:The biggest question I have these days in what is the most cost effective way to get new business especially if you are a startup where you have a bunch of capital and you want to get the biggest bang for your buck quickly and start getting clients who want your products and services now rather than the old fashion ways such as tele-marketing, cold calling, business networking…..There must be a way especially with the power of the internet and social media to find people who are looking for what you have to offer and work smarter to have these people come to you and seek you out but do so in a way that isn’t going to send you broke within your first month.
I would be interested to get some ideas from everyone in the group
Hello,
It would be great to know that.
Its what I was hoping we could all learn from this thread by contributing.But now in hinds sight I think there may be a few issues with this thread being able to collect that sort of information
1) My initial post may not have been clear enough
2) People may not want to share this thinking they are giving away secrets on whats making their business work and the last thing they want is competitors knowing this.
3) Information like this may be seen as something you should pay for so would not be freely given.I dunno its just a hindsight hunch I now have.
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.