You can enlist everyone in your organization who works with your clients to ask for referrals. There are only two things that hold them back today:

1.    Awareness of how important it is
2.    Fear of rejection

Creating a referral gathering process can address both. To set up your process consider the following.

Create a profile of who to ask. Asking for referrals can be scary. It’s another opportunity for rejection. Perhaps your client isn’t as happy as you thought or may not want to disclose names. With this in mind, you want to be sure you’re asking people with whom you have the best potential for success. Create a profile of the characteristics of the ideal client to ask, such as they appreciate your recommendations on how to use IT more effectively across their business. This helps everyone on your team envision who they’re asking.

Identify four perfect points to ask. Knowing who to ask is only one piece of successful referral gathering. There are points in your sales and account management process that are natural opportunities to ask for referrals. Clients are happy. Discussions are valuable. They’ll be more than willing to recommend people for you to speak with. Determine which four are your best and integrate them into your processes.

Create additional natural opportunities for asking. Clearly you don’t want to ask for referrals every time you see a client or prospect. For most people that’s uncomfortable. If you want to extend beyond the four points in your sales and account management process, create some other genuine circumstances to ask, such as quarterly business reviews or project close-out meetings.

Provide the words to use to ask, then train people to use them. Teach your team how to frame their referral request, including how to transition from the topic at hand to the question. It doesn’t need to be a half-day training. Use an hour at a company meeting or your Monday morning meeting. The goal is to make people comfortable with asking for referrals. The quickest way to do that is to practice together.

Measure referrals. Not only will this validate that your process is working, it’ll show your team the impact they’re having on growing the business. Create a lead source code in your CRM and you’ll be able to measure sales results from referrals and even the lifetime value of referrals.

Once you take a proactive approach and make referral gathering part of your sales and account management process your team will get comfortable asking and you’ll have a steady flow of warm prospects. Combine this with your Referral Rewards Program and you have a referral strategy for success!

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.773.1285.

Gone is the dialing for dollars mentality. You can do better than that.

You can use these tools to do everything from identifying who your best-odds prospects are to deducing why they’d want to speak with you, writing a powerful email, and ultimately attracting them to you. Here are some of my favorites.

1.    Identify the who. Once you know the profile of the types of contacts and companies you want to approach, use Zoominfo.com, NetProspex.com, Insideview.com or Hoovers.com to search and get the names of the best contacts to talk to.

2.    Delve in. Go a step further and do some research for the contacts you’ve uncovered on those same sites. What have they written? Where have they been quoted? You can quickly get a feel for what’s top of mind with them and where their passions lie. Use this information to craft your grabber value proposition for phone calls and emails. Use it to write blogs or articles that’ll attract their attention and peak their interest. Comment about your ideas on social networks.

3.    Secure contact info. Start with these same sites to find the most current contact information for your target prospects. Jigsaw and NetProspex are maintained by people like you and me, so they’ve often got very current information. While you’re there, add a few contacts of your own and earn points for free contact information downloads. You can also use LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networks as a tool.

4.    Find elusive email addresses.  If you still can’t find an email address here’s a trick to try. From your search engine type “@their website domain” and it’ll pull up anywhere on the web where email addresses for that domain appear. Now you’ll have the email protocol for that company and can more effectively guess your contact’s email address.

5.    Watch your prospects. No, we aren’t talking stalking. Watch what your top prospects are doing using alert services like Google Alerts for free. Set up a daily alert and see all the tweets and comments they’ve made and where they’re mentioned. You’ll know what to talk about when you call and more importantly, when they need you to call.

6.    Make your emails stand out. Use Gobbledygook.grader.com to pick out trite or hype-filled words and phrases you don’t even know you’re using. It’s a great tool to increase the impact of your brochures and online copy, too.

7.    Know if they’re listening. One of the biggest challenges with email prospecting is knowing if anyone has read what you sent. Use ReadNotify.com to trace email opens and forwards, numbers of times read, and URL clicks. Use Bit.ly to shorten long links for social network comments and emails. You can track how many times the links are opened, forwarded and by whom.

8.    Increase your own productivity. If you’re a Microsoft Outlook user Xobni.com is a plugin that makes searching your inbox and finding information about your contacts fast and easy. You can even search social networks for information about your contacts.

Getting people to reply is the most difficult aspect of prospecting. These tools give you new levels of information and insight to increase your odds of success.

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.773.1285.

Of course there are many ways to advertise via the more popular websites; however, these are becoming increasingly more expensive the more popular they become. Banner and Pay-Per-Click advertising are amongst other successful methods too and can be successful with the correct strategy and budget.

Business directories have been around for years in the well-known form of Yellow Pages. However, businesses are becoming increasingly marketing savvy and they require more than a mere list of local suppliers and printed directories can be limited with regard to easily updating information regularly.

A well established online regional business directory is an excellent marketing tool for any business looking to capture more prospects searching locally for the products and services they’re selling. When coupled with even a modest internet marketing strategy such as a website or blog and perhaps a regular email marketing series, it will attract both new customers and keep existing clientele hot until they’re ready to buy from you.

Business directories aim to gather and promote all types of local businesses in one place on their website simply categorised and so increasing the number of potential customers finding you. Two type of listing are usually offered – regular listing and featured listing:

• Regular listing: is free and allows any business an entry level presence and should be the crucial first stage for any business.
• Featured listing: is an upgrade to the basic free listing allowing increased functionality for a modest cost.

There’s the obvious advantage for you listing your business in the top category of the business directory but the competition here can be quite strong too so careful time spend over content always pays bigger dividends and often you can be too close to your own business so outsourcing this crucial task can be cheap in relation to the benefits gained.

People will find your business from the search engines and the search facility on the business directories so thought is vital when choosing ‘key’ words and phrases describing your business and what your prospects will be searching for to find you.

You should consider the importance of the business directory to increase your business. Find the best directory for your region and place your listing into it. This will be really helpful to you and increase the number of your customers.

Use the leverage of your business directory even if it’s just a free listing; ensure whatever content is allowed in your profile is relevant and regularly up to date and search complimentary businesses in your area to see if you can partner with them or maybe some joint marketing sharing the cost and resources. How about a joint email newsletter or regular offers between customer databases, blog updates and swapping articles all of which can be inexpensive and benefit both parties.

If you would like to ‘brainstorm’ some online and offline low-cost ideas for generating more laser targeted traffic to your website, blog or into your door, contact us.

The prospects who attend feel as if they know you and want your assistance.

With today’s technology, events are inexpensive to run.  But if you’re going to do all the work to create great content with high value, you want to be sure that the people who are interested in it know it’s happening and how to sign up.

You won’t get the number of qualified leads you deserve if only 5 people attend! Here’s where social media can help.

Now I know what you’re thinking. I’ve been there, too. “Social media can’t possibly help me. I don’t have much time for it, don’t do it regularly, and am not connected to that many people.”

So what?

I ran an event just last month that had people I’d never heard of before in attendance. They found it from re-tweets of my tweets, comments others had commented on, and our postings across LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. These people weren’t connected to me anywhere. Social networking made it happen.

How? Let me share my strategies with you.

1.    Post the event details on your website – This is your opportunity to say as much as you’d like about the event, including every fact. Point all your comments back to your website for additional information and registration. Not only do interested readers learn more about the event, now they’re in your website, too.
2.    Comment and tweet – This goes without saying, but here are a few extras to ponder. People tend to prefer one social network over the others, but no target markets as a whole typically favor one over another. Given this, you want to be sure you talk up your event on every one you use. Comment about it in your LinkedIn status. Discuss it on Facebook. Tweet about it. Carry your comments over the course of days and weeks preceding the event, right up to minutes before it begins.
3.    Post everywhere – Lots of people don’t realize that you can post events to LinkedIn and Facebook in special “Event” sections. Once you do, people connected to you are notified, and others outside your group see them when they use key word searches. Your network can forward the link on to others in their groups who might be interested, too.
4.    Use links – as you comment and post, include links to the details on your website. Keep the postings brief and quick to scan. If you’ve hit someone’s hot button, they’ll click through to learn more and sign up. Use a tool like www.bit.ly or www.tinyurl.com to shorten long links.
5.    Sign-up on LinkedIn – as people from your target segments enroll, shoot them a quick email and ask them to click in LinkedIn that they’re attending. Send them the direct LinkedIn event link to make it simple. Now all their connections see that they’re attending, expanding your message within your target market.
6.    Leverage your network – ask your top clients and peer network to comment and tweet about the event. Give them brief phrases they can simply copy and paste. Have them note on LinkedIn that they’re interested in attending the event. Your message will reach out into their contacts, further extending your reach even though they aren’t attending.

Once your content is perfected, events are a numbers game. The more interested people from your target market that you can attract to your event, the greater the number of leads. Social networking can get your message out, bringing participants and leads to you!

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.773.1285.

Email marketing campaigns are affordable, and can help small retailers to compete with the big boys during this essential sales period.

Retailers have to make certain that the programme will meet their defined objectives before launching any email marketing campaign.

It’s important to decide the key elements that will help their campaign stand out, what real value can be provided to their recipients – both prospects and customers. To be able to succeed in this, there needs to be combined features in evidence that cover both promotional and informational aspects of their marketing endeavour.

The programme needs to encourage a long a beneficial relationship as well as persuade the urgent purchase.

Hopefully these strategies will inspire an email campaign to engage your audience:

1. Don’t be too pushy: Loyalty is the name of the game so make sure your not pushing the ‘sale’ too hard. After all you want your customer to come back again not merely give you a quick sale. Gear your campaign to making sure your brand is kept in the audience’s awareness by creating a regular monthly or bi-monthly newsletter which has ideas and holiday offers that provide good value and not merely money off.
2. Ensure a well-rounded campaign: Make sure your promotions have all the relevant elements required to engage your prospects correctly. These are; describing your offer in the subject line, a powerful ‘call to action’, a clickable link or image that relates to your promotion and keep the text brief.
3. Extend your seasonal joy with your functioning messages: When informing your prospects and customers about operational happenings it’s in order to take the opportunity to softly promote yourself. Include mechanisms such as links to your website and/or blog or maybe a coupon or offer. Remember though, these messages aren’t principally marketing focused but a modest amount of branding is absolutely fine.
4. Choose the occasion not the day: There’s never a good or bad time to send email campaigns or best times either. So scheduling emails should relate to when your target audience are going to be more interested in their products and on the related special occasions. Your messages (and offers) need to relate to occasions like holidays, product launches even the seasonal climate or topical subjects and obviously sent in time to make sure they’re relevant.

If you need any help with ideas, planning and/or implementing your campaigns, why not contact us.

Because they are the search engines’ way of assessing how good your site is. And if they think your site is good they’ll send you lots of visitors.

The logic goes that if lots of sites (particularly good quality, high traffic sites) are linking to your site it must be good.

Also the number and quality of incoming links forms the major part of the off-site bit of search engine optimisation.

So how do you build lots of incoming links to your site? With a lot of work!

Seriously – off-site optimisation is a never ending process of generating and retaining as many high quality links to your site as possible.

here’s some ways to build high quality links:

1. Blog directories
2. Social sites
3. Coment on other blogs
4. Link from your blog to your own sites
5. Participate in forums
6. Good quality content

If there’s one thing that runs through method though, it’s the need for regular good quality information on your blog. Without that you’ll be dead in the water.

So here’s a good approach to follow:

• Make sure your site is set up properly for the search engines.
• Write good quality, well researched articles that answer questions, solve problems or provide entertainment. And keep doing it.
• Carry out the 6 link building steps set out in this article above – and keep doing it. It’s a continuous process.

It will take time to build links to your site, particularly if you’re writing in a highly competitive niche, so keep at it.

Persistence cannot be over-rated as a requirement for success. So if you need help with these strategies, contact us.

Traditional websites have been the ‘hot thing’, however, today its blogs. Why?

Well, frankly it’s because technology is moving at such an incredible rate of speed and new ways of doing things are being developed all the time. And blogs are just the next step in Internet web technology.

Specifically a traditional website is something that’s ‘static’. It sits on the screen, it presents some sort of information or it sells a product or service, and it ultimately requires some sort of third party application to provide interaction. For example bulletin board software or chat software are usually additional applications to enhance static websites.

These ‘old style’ websites have become boring because they are limited to content that gets stale and also limited by a finite number of pages. The content often isn’t fresh and constantly changing and you the visitor tends to leave to get content from other websites.

Blogs can be very different. They are made specifically with visitor interaction in mind so you can maximise your social standings with your website. They’re also intended to be updated frequently with fresh content, then rather than replacing old content, it coexists with new material to make an even more content rich site. Blog readers expect blogs to have daily or weekly articles postings.

Blogs also give your website visitors, the ability to leave comments to you and others who visit your site about their thoughts regarding your posts and articles.

They also get to use a blogs most useful feature, the RSS feed, to keep updated about the blog via email or other RSS reader application. This is usually referred to a blogs subscriber base.

Importantly, unlike with traditional static websites where search engine rankings were the number one focus, with blogs that focus has drastically changed to reader count. People care more about how many readers subscribe to their blogs then they do about how much traffic comes to their blog. This is what makes blog traffic so very targeted; the readers of a blog are so interested in the topic they have subscribed to keep up to date. It’s similar to the conventional mailing lists.

The last thing about blog that make them really special is the RSS feed. RSS feeds empower blogs with the ability to notify search engines, directories, and similar services of new content and updated content. This means you don’t have to wait until the next time Google decides to visit your website to tell it you have a new article posted, your blog does this automatically by using an RSS ping to tell Google for automatically.

Just by owning a blog will eventually get it indexed by sites like Google, which is NOT true of a standard static site.

Asked us about our special Blogsite packages including regular content for your business

Traditional transactional marketing involved the organisation focusing all of its marketing efforts on attracting the customer for one off sales. However, customers who are loyal end up spending more in the long-term, so it makes sense to keep existing customers happy.

Attracting and retaining customers

Relationship marketing involves the organisation undertaking a number of important activities. First of all, the company must put into place tactics to attract customers. Methods used to attract customers may include promoting the product and brand, offering good quality products/services and competitive prices. Secondly customers that are attracted to the organisation have to be retained.

After all, what’s the point of all the hard work (and money) of attracting customers if you can’t retain them? Methods used to retain, may include, loyalty cards, a good customer service section, and an individual account manager if it is a large client, along with product variety and quality.

Methods of monitoring customer satisfaction

An organisation must continue to satisfy customers, but let’s be honest; it is very difficult to keep 100% of your customers satisfied all the time, one reason is because needs and wants of your customers change. So we have to monitor what is happening in our customer environment.

Methods used to monitor customer satisfaction may include:

• Focus groups
• General comments
• Online surveys
• Suggestion boxes
• Customer complaints
• Mystery Shoppers
• Questionnaires
• Personal interviews

In order to retain customers you must keep up to date with the needs of your customers.

Your customers needs don’t remain static either, they’re always changing. Adapting and changing along with these needs will help your organisation develop the relationship you want with your customers.

The benefits:

1. Increased profits
2. Increased market share
3. Increased brand awarenes

The more you focus on customers – their needs and desires – the more they’ll want to do business with you. Contact us to discuss some of the great cost-effective startegies we can introduce to grow your business.

”The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about”

Oscar Wilde was the master of the snappy one-liner, but unbeknown to him his words of wisdom were to prove particularly relevant, in the early 21st century, to small businesses. Several recent surveys have shown that word of mouth advertising – a personal recommendation about your product or service – is the most effective way to get people to consider what you have to offer, especially if you are relatively small or just starting up.

Satisfied customers are beyond any doubt the best form of advertising any business can get. People will always talk about a business with which they’ve had a good experience. And with the dramatic growth of online media options, social networking sites, blogs and business / product review sites can play a big role in spreading both positive and negative feedback. These are all prime locations for people to endorse a company or let off steam.

Online vs Offline

Online media is both exhilarating and terrifying in how quickly it can get a message out there. It isn’t possible to manage what people are saying about your product online, but if you are confident in the service you provide, and know that the vast majority of your customers are satisfied with it, this shouldn’t matter, and you can enjoy the viral effect of these individual recommendations. But it is important to bear in mind that an online message only reaches people one at a time, when they are sitting at a computer surfing the web.

It’s also important to remember that if you are relatively small or just starting up, you are unlikely to have so many people talking about you, so the word of mouth effect will not be so pronounced. Couple this with the fact that, as we said, online media only reaches people individually, at a computer screen, and you’ll find a catch-22 conundrum that may not initially appear to have a simple answer.

As a small business, you need to find ways to generate word of mouth beyond that coming from existing customers. You also need to ensure that your product stands above the rest in your marketplace by achieving greater exposure than the majority, being talked about because you are putting your name in front of consumers in a relevant, targeted and impressive manner.

By improving your visibility in front of potential customers it is possible to create a profile that belies your size or the length of time you’ve been in business. The best way to do this is to find ways to make your business look bigger than it actually is by quickly building your brand and giving you an ‘extra shop window’ for what your business is offering.

‘Offline’ media, such as posters and press, can increase your exposure and get your business talked about because potential customers see your message all around them on a regular basis. Billboards and press can be booked solely for your target local area, making the message you communicate through them as relevant as possible. By turning to offline media to build your business profile, you enhance the size of your company by appearing ever-present. Potential customers have more than one opportunity to find out about you and remember you as they see your name in a number of different places. Offline media is a big, bold statement, helping to build trust by making an emphatic point, which is that you have something that you’re proud to talk about and that you want to share as widely as you can, so as many people as possible can take advantage of it.

As a small or relatively new business, the ‘extra shop window’ of offline media can make all the difference. By being clever with it, you can really gain cut-through in a difficult market. Poster advertising, for instance, has traditionally been considered the domain of big brands only, but through the online service offered by Signposter.com, any small business can book the local poster or posters most relevant to their potential customers, at a very low cost. This will elevate your business name above the competition into big brand league, and create exactly the talking point that was needed. If people see your billboard then they are more likely to remember your name above your competitors, therefore more likely to pass on your details if asked.

Top tips for successful ‘offline’ promotion

And finally, let’s not forget, it is all very well to choose a poster site or a newspaper to promote your brand, but you need to use it correctly to get the maximum impact – and therefore, talkability – from it. Some good tips are:

·    Make sure you know your customers and potential customers before you plan an offline media campaign – you will need to understand them to know what media they consume;
·    Ensure that your ad is in the right place at the right time, using what you know about your customer base to decide where and when will work;
·    Make sure the creative execution you use is right for your message and will appeal to your customers – perhaps ask some of them what they think while you are creating your ad?

Be brave – choose media that you may not previously have considered and that may not be the default choice for others in your field. Many local businesses use press so it could be a good idea to look for advertising opportunities beside this

Jenny Nguyen is Marketing Manager of Signposter.com, a revolutionary online business helping SMEs plan, buy and manage outdoor advertising campaigns. Jenny is an outdoor advertising expert with a depth of experience in advising businesses on how to use outdoor media in their marketing strategies. Previously, Jenny worked as a marketing specialist advising Fortune 500 companies on best practice marketing.

As well as the legal constraints, think about your brand values and the demographics of your audience. In general, younger people are more comfortable with online approaches and may be willing to surrender personal information in return for incentives or services. Older prospects tend to be more likely to opt out – even from postal communication – so capturing their interest (and permission) can involve more cajoling.

Revisit permissions
Legacy data exists almost everywhere but how much of it is properly permissioned? It’s important to audit existing data and categorise it by reference to the consents you hold. In some cases, you may simply not know what options the individual received at the point of data capture. It may be necessary to‘re-permission’ this data by contacting the individuals afresh and asking them to confirm consents, usually an exercise that requires careful copywriting and some level of incentivising.

Always be friendly
Increasingly consumers judge brands on their handling of personal data; many will carefully select the companies they will allow to use their data. It is vital to adopt a customer friendly permission strategy which should be demonstrated at every point of data capture. Because of fears about identity theft, reassurance that data will be held securely and only used for specified purposes is likely to improve opt-in levels. Think, think, and think again.

Data protection statements (or Fair Processing Notices) need careful copywriting. Some common pitfalls when writing statements are: Specifying a single contact method when you want to use multiple channels. Limiting the frequency of contact for which you gain permission. For example, if you promise the individual ‘monthly updates’ they will not expect to receive fortnightly communications.- Collecting in the name of a single brand, which prevents use by other brands/companies in the group. – Not collecting third-party permission at the point of first collection. If you decide later that you want to release the data you will have to reapply for permission and generate a positive response. – Missing out some significant opportunities. For example, market research that will be personalised to an individual.

Research by Opt-4 (Source: The Opt-out Fallout, 2005) has suggested that statements which assume permission are generally disliked. Overly legalistic statements are also disliked. In general, using the brand ‘tone of voice’ in the statement will improve results. The law requires that the individual must be given an opportunity to object and a means to do so but – contrary to popular marketing belief – there is no specific mechanism by which this must be achieved.

Opt-out boxes have become the norm to facilitate the right to object because they are simple and well understood by the general public. Nearly 50% of consumers are aware of opt-out boxes according to research from the Direct Mail Information Service.

Provide incentives
Consumers need to see the value of giving you permission to use their data, so reminding them that they may miss out on special offers or money-off promotions can improve sign-up. Online this can be done by seeking registration for newsletters with tailored content; with careful wording, postal permission for general marketing can often be gained at the same time as sign up for a customer magazine.

Offering the individual channel options may also increase your permissions. Many more people object to telemarketing than to postal or email communications, so giving the consumer choice (rather than seeking global permissions) allows you to understand which channel ‘doors’ are likely to be open and which closed. You can improve response rates by playing to these channel preferences. Make sure your promises reflect your practices; the privacy policy you display online should encapsulate your permission values.

Make sure that the promises made in the privacy policy reflect your actual practices. There’s nothing worse than offering the consumer a choice, then ignoring their wishes. Preference management – especially if you are collecting permission by channel – requires complex database structures to be developed so you can keep your data accurate. Remember, legacy systems often have a single ‘do not mail’ field for suppression which will severely limit your ability to capture permissions.

Evaluate the impact
Gaining consent is just the start of the permission journey. The law says that the individual should be able to withdraw consent at any time. Nothing prompts disaffection more than over-mailing or sending irrelevant offers. Contacts with customers should be carefully controlled and the impact on the level of permissions evaluated after each campaign. Permission to market is a privilege not a right.

Article by Rosemary Smith, director of Opt-4 data protection consultancy, gives practical advice on how to obtain customer permissions.