The 4 Most Important Changes You Need to Make To Get More Live Leads

“I’ve been sending out 3,000 postcards a month but I’m only getting a few responses lately. What am I doing wrong?” – Frank from Little Rock, AR

Are you getting to few responses, generating too few leads with your small business marketing?

In order to get the same amount of business flowing through their doors many entrepreneurs have taken the logical step of increasing their marketing, extending their reach. That’s a good idea but it’s going to cost you a bundle if you make any of the following marketing mistakes. Things like:

1.    No time deadline on the offer. It is hard for some people to accept this, but: people need to be told exactly WHAT to do and WHEN they need to do it by. That is how you get people to get up off their chair, go to the computer, pull up a web page, and order your product or service.

If you don’t tell them EXACTLY what they need to do, by when, how to do it, what they should expect in return, and what they lose if they don’t do it, your order rate will be a fraction of what it could be.

2.    Not leveraging the customer testimonials he has.  Why is it that entrepreneurs will work their tail off 24×7 to build a business, and are scared of asking for a testimonial?  If you have done a great job and delivered what you promised to your customer, don’t you have the right to at least ASK for a testimonial? Of course you do!

Once you have delivered on your promises, you owe them nothing more.  And it is time to get some thick skin and get out there to ask for a testimonial. Then make sure to ask if you can use it.

Best?  Get their picture or a video and use that too.  These new postcards have testimonials scattered throughout front and back and will always make a marked improvement in the response you get.

3.    Too cutesy. I understand some of his rationale, but all of his postcards used either puppies or little kids as the main graphic. While that may work once to your prospects (if worded properly), over doing it like this is setting you up for failure.

I am a huge believer in using a theme in your marketing (could be pets… or kids), but all cute pictures is defeating the purpose of the marketing piece… to MAKE MONEY.

Mixing in a great variety of graphics, with a much more compelling sales message will see a better quality of client that responds to the copy… not how cute the puppy was.

4.    Not enough copy. There is an age-old debate out there about if people will read those long sales letters.  The “no” advocates argue that your readers are ADD, are overwhelmed, have short attention spans, and just refuse to read long copy.  While this may fit some of them, it definitely doesn’t fit the real buyers out there.

What you will find is that when you increase the amount of copy you use, you’ll start getting better clients.  Qualified prospects are willing to read more of your message, meaning they are more susceptible to your “pitch”.

And don’t let yourself get distracted by using a bunch of cute graphics and expec t them to convey your message.

If you were making a one-on-one sales call… would you stand there without talking?  Of course not! You’d look stupid and your prospect would think you lost it.  But that is what a pretty ad with no copy does… looks nice but says nothing.

All your marketing materials are sales people for your company.

Are they saying anything useful?

Or just looking cute and pretty with lots of white space?

With the busiest shopping season of the year almost upon us, NOW is the time to review your small business marketing.

Make sure to avoid the 4 marketing mistakes detailed above. Take each of your holiday marketing pieces (websites, blogs, postcards, autoresponders, etc) and put each of them through the 4 ‘gotchas’ above. And, with your marketing getting a better response after all it will be a much more enjoyable (and profitable) fall!

–   Troy