Bisulfide

Ultimately the success of any business depends upon having a
consistent flow of new prospective clients. Unfortunately, far too many
individuals rely solely upon their existing clients and referrals as their
primary methods for getting new clients. While this may prove to be a
successful strategy short term, it invariably leads to the “feast and
famine” roller coaster that so many firms and individuals experience.

On a fundamental level, marketing for new clients is pretty
straightforward. We have found successful marketing campaigns
focuses on:

1) Targeting a hyper-responsive group of prospective clients.

2) Identifying the issues that are of most importance to this group.

3) Motivating them to self-nominate themselves as being interested in
learning more about your services.

4) Moving them along a sequence of steps that encourages them to take
action.

If you focus on these four steps, it is relatively easy to create a marketing
system that will consistently brings you a steady stream of new clients-
all of whom have pre-qualified themselves as being interested in
learning more about your services.

Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail.

Step 1: Determining Who you are going to target.

Too often this is given only a cursory consideration. Since we all operate
on limited marketing budgets and only have time to follow up with those
most likely to actually engage our services, identifying the most hyper-
responsive sub-groups within a targeted market is very important.

We define Hyper-Responsives as the sub-group that is most interested
in obtaining a competitive edge. Thus, they are most likely to hire
outside advisors to achieve that objective. In order to identify this group
we look for specific traits and behaviors which enables us to segment
this group from the larger target market.

One trick is to look for those that read the relevant trade publications and
are members of the professional associations. These data-points
usually indicate that the individual is interested in staying current and
maintaining their competitive edge. Thus they are likely to be the most
interested in at least learning more about your services.

Step 2: Create a Free Information Report.

Remember that the goal of any lead generation tool is get prospective
clients to “raise their hands” about being interested in your services. The
“hook” to achieve this is the free special report.

The goal of the free report is two-fold. First it must contain enough
practical information so that the reader feels that they have learned
something that they didn’t know before. This is crucial for developing
credibility. The second objective is to entice the reader to become
hungry for more information. This balance of providing enough (but not
too much) information is crucial for moving the relationship process to
the next steps.

We recommend that your free report be between 4-12 pages in length
and be available from your website.

Step 3: Crafting the One-Page Lead Generation Letter.

Among all the lead generation methods we track, the one page letter
has the highest metrics in the B2B market place. We recommend that
you write your lead generating letters after you have created the free
special report. Remember the objective of the letter is to position oneself
as an industry or functional expert with an interesting perspective on an
issue the prospective client may be facing.

We cannot emphasize strongly enough that it is a mistake to simply
include your report along with your initial letter. The letter’s sole purpose
is to intrigue the prospective client enough so that they want to request
the information.

Successful markting campaigns emphasize consistency and repetition.
Thus we recommend that you develop a series of three letters which will
be sent in sequence-each focusing on compelling reasons to request
the free report.

Step 4: Sending the free information report and collecting data about
prospective clients.

As mentioned earlier, the offer of the free report in your letter should
direct prospective clients to your website.

As a “Big thumb” goal you should try to get 75% of these visitors to
follow through and fill out the information form to get the report. Although
it would seem natural that people going to your site would follow
through and request the free report, this is unfortunately not the case.

Care must be taken to ensure that the landing-page you are directing
readers to, re-emphasize the benefits that will be obtained by requesting
the free report. Don’t assume that just because visitors are at your site
they will automatically do what we want them to.

Precisely what information to request becomes a crucial issue at this
point. While you want more that just name & email, requesting too much
information will suppress response.

Successful marketing campaigns on the premise that through consistent
and regular contact we can move prospects through a carefully
orchestrated series of steps which results in an identifiable percentage
of them purchasing our services.

The key is to automate as much of it as possible.

We suggest that the initial auto-responder be sent out three hours after
the report is requested. It should serve to simply thank the recipient for
requesting the information and to introduce yourself.

The next series of messages should move the conversion process
through a carefully designed series of steps in which you both build
credibility for yourself and move the prospect to take action. As with the
other steps in the process the ability to communicate content in a
compelling manner is crucial for success.

One of the main challenges of any marketing effort is the follow-up
stage. When we look at marketing campaigns that have achieved
outstanding success and compare them to those that have performed
below expectation, the difference is almost always in how effectively the
stay in touch process was implemented.

Mark Satterfield is the creator of the Gentle Rain Marketing System: How
to Generate a Consistent Flow of New Clients. Quickly & Easily. With No
Cold Calling. Find out more: http://www.gentlerainmarketing.com