You wouldn’t try to collect water in a \t\t\t bucket that leaked or catch fish with a torn net, but \t\t\t that is what many service professionals and small businesses do. \t\t\t They work hard to attract clients and customers but too often \t\t\t their strategic marketing is full of holes.<\/p>\n
The biggest holes in small businesses\u2019 marketing efforts are in lead generation. For those that don’t know it already, identifying, attracting and building a steady stream of prospects is the number one strategic marketing task for growing a service business.<\/p>\n
You need to know who is interested in your products and services in order to market to them, again and again.<\/p>\n
Every small business has some sort of lead generation strategy, \t\t\t whether its just handing out business cards, sending out press releases, \t\t\t writing articles, asking for referrals or, in more recent years, \t\t\t putting up a web site. The problem is that many of these \t\t\t approaches are used sporadically not systematically, and techniques \t\t\t aren’t in place to capture the contacts made.<\/strong><\/p>\n Interested prospects are missed, or if contact is made, \t\t\t are pushed away by your materials, web site or phone system. The \t\t\t result is that hundreds and thousands of potential prospects fall \t\t\t through cracks in your marketing and you can’t profit from their \t\t\t business. <\/strong><\/p>\n If your lead generation strategy and systems aren’t generating dozens \t\t\t or hundreds of new leads each week then your small business \t\t marketing strategy has a big gap in it.<\/strong><\/p>\n 1. The Lack of Compelling Content<\/strong> Compelling content \t\t\t captures prospects\u2019 attention by focusing on their problems. \t\t\t Without good copy prospects won’t be moved to become clients.<\/p>\n – Is your marketing content compelling from prospects\u2019 perspective?<\/p>\n – Does it lead with information about prospects\u2019 problems \t\t and concerns?<\/p>\n 2. Limited Reach<\/strong> Despite effort put into creating small business marketing \t\t materials, building web sites and writing articles, independent \t\t professionals rarely get the visibility they want<\/strong>. Articles \t\t are only read by a handful of people and web sites are hard \t\t to find.<\/p>\n To leverage the time and money you put into your marketing \t\t\t materials, articles, and web sites, you need to do everything you \t\t\t can to help people find them. This sounds obvious, but most service \t\t\t professionals write an article and just post it on their web site \t\t\t or send it to a few clients.<\/p>\n With hundreds of online ezines and \t\t\t offline publications looking for content, you could be putting an \t\t\t article in front of tens of thousands of people instead of just \t\t\t a few.<\/p>\n The same is true of search engine listings. Most people \t\t\t can’t even find their own sites in the search engines. \t\t Help the search engines put your web site on the first page \t\t or two for your keywords and you’ll increase your exposure \t\t and reach hundreds of new prospects each week.<\/p>\n Depending \t\t on your business, this is easier then most people realize \t\t and will extend the reach of your small business marketing \t\t dramatically.<\/p>\n – How many people per week see the marketing copy or articles \t\t\t that are meant to get them to make contact?<\/p>\n – What are you doing to increase this number?<\/p>\n 3. Missing Motivators<\/strong> – Does your marketing motivate prospects to come to you \t\t and give you their contact information?<\/p>\n 4. Malfunctioning or Non-Existent Systems<\/strong> Again, this \t\t\t sounds obvious, but how many times have you been frustrated \t\t\t by menu-driven answering systems that didn’t list the item you called \t\t\t about? (Or made you go through too many steps to find it?) Or a \t\t\t web site with no name, email address or phone number of a person \t\t\t who could answer your questions. And many phone systems and web \t\t\t sites aren’t set up to capture visitors\u2019 contact information.<\/p>\n – Do you have automated systems that make it easy for prospects \t\t\t to contact your company?<\/p>\n – Do you have automated systems that make it easy for prospects \t\t\t to give you their contact information?<\/p>\n Marketing involves generating leads, converting them to \t\t\t clients and reselling to clients. If you’re not attracting \t\t\t the number of customers and clients you want, make sure your marketing \t\t strategy isn’t full of holes.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Use these 4 easy ways to supercharge your marketing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/ic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/ic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/ic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/ic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/ic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/ic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/ic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/ic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/ic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Four Common Holes in Small Business Marketing<\/h4>\n
\nWhether it’s the title of your web site and the description \t\t\t shown in the search engines, or the title of your article and the \t\t\t first paragraph, your content needs to pull in prospects. Too \t\t\t often marketing materials are written from the sellers\u2019 point \t\t\t of view<\/strong> instead of the prospects\u2019.<\/p>\n
\nIf you could contact all the people who need and want your \t\t\t services, you might want to. Using advertising, direct mail or \t\t\t cold calling to do this is in most cases cost prohibitive. PR, \t\t\t writing articles and having a web site are some low cost ways \t\t\t of getting attention. The objective with any of these is to reach \t\t\t as many people as possible in order to find qualified leads.<\/p>\n
\nGrabbing prospects\u2019 attention is the first step in lead generation; moving them to make contact, visit your web site or call your company and add themselves to your target list is the next step. When you write an article or send out a mailing, provide an incentive \t\t\t for prospects to take action<\/strong>. Offer a workshop or free \t\t\t report.<\/p>\n
\nIf your marketing is working, prospects will call your \t\t\t office or stop by your web site. You want to make it is as easy \t\t\t as possible for prospects to get in touch with you, and you \t\t\t want to collect their contact information<\/strong>.<\/p>\n