Enewsletters, used wisely, can help grow your business simply by helping you stay front of mind and in their inboxes on a regular basis. It’s not enough to be in their inboxes, but you need to be providing quality information as a way to build your relationships with them.
How can you be relevant and provide value to your clients with your enewsletter? Here are a few options:
Know the purpose for your enewsletter. Yes, you want to stay in front of your clients, but you need to bring them something of value. Know the purpose for your enewsletter before you start.
Keep the content relevant. If you have a wide client base, you may want to segregate your enewsletters and send them to the target audience that would benefit the most.
Keep it brief. Your clients don’t have the time to read a lengthy enewsletter. Put in brief points and then direct them back to your website with links and photos. Remember, many of them are reading your correspondence on a smartphone — make it readable.
Show your expertise. Make your enewsletters a resource that they keep and refer to when they need the answer to a question. Stay on top of your field and become the go-to person when there are changes afoot.
Speak to them. If the enewsletter program you’re using allows you to embed a video, then share your message via video. Keep it short, snappy and fun. Use video once or twice a month as a way to keep your clients/readers engaged.
Make sure your enewsletters have a clear call to action in every one and be consistent in sending them out. We provide enewsletter services and can assist you in determining how or if an enewsletter would benefit your marketing efforts.
Unless you’re a fast food restaurant, chances are you cannot be, nor do you want to be, everything to everyone. You can’t mix and match all of your products (sandwiches) and add or subtract other items (condiments) until you are everything to everyone. You will make more money and be more productive and well-respected if you focus on a particular niche. Claim your expertise and focus on a particular client or market segment. Be the gourmet restaurant, not the fast food drive through.
Who is your ideal client? When you’re just starting out you may not truly know nor will you find it easy to turn away
potential clients who might not be just right for your goods or services. You don’t want to fall into the trap of changing your offerings to feed the market. Let the market come to you because you are specialized and exclusive.
Here are steps to work through when developing the persona of your ideal client:
If you’ve built the better mousetrap, who would be best served by it? Consider your client’s pain points and the solution your product or service offers and focus on that as your potential market.
If you know that your goods or services address XYZ issue in the market place, then go to the marketplace and demonstrate how you can help them do their XYZ even better.
If you have a client base, take some time to look at them and note all of the common traits they share. If you have turned away potential clients, make note of why and what they did, or did not, possess that made you think that your goods or services weren’t ideal for them. Your current client base is your best source for building a client persona.
Target a specific market. Make sure that your goods or services fit their needs then focus on making what you offer the best it can be.
Entrepreneurs are faced with myriad start up costs whether it’s renting office space or hiring employees or finding ways to market their business or building a professional team such as a business coach, lawyer or accountant. This could mean a large outlay of cash. What can you do to cut back on some of that outlay?
I have tips for marketing business on a shoe-string budget and these can get you started until you have the money coming in to lay out cash for a more intensive marketing strategy:
Face-to-face networking don’t cost much and can do more than you imagine for growing a business. Why? Because people like to do business with someone they “know, like and trust” and the best way to do that is by getting out of the office and shaking a few hands.
Word of mouth and referrals from current customers don’t cost anything more than the time you spend asking for them. Warm leads are better and easier to close than cold leads.
Share your expertise by writing blog posts or sending out newsletters to your list. Writing about your area of expertise shows potential clients that you’re the expert in your niche. Newsletters not only share your expertise, but keep you front of mind — and in the inbox — of current and potential clients.
Offer free information. While you don’t want to give away the farm, you can give information that is useful to your prospects that gives them a sense of what you do and who you are and leaves them wanting more of what you have to offer.
To get individuals to take a chance on you and to leave a known entity, provide them with a guarantee of your services then exceed their expectations.
Don’t forget that social media is an ideal — and for the most part, free — platform for sharing who you are and what you do with potential clients. Remember, though that the operative word is “social” no one wants to be sold to all the time.
What are your best marketing practices that don’t break the bank?
If you want to secure speaking engagements or have clients find you through your blog or website or your social media pages, you need to have a robust business bio. You also need to not only have a robust bio (by that I mean it should have searchable terms for your business niche) but it should be complete.
Having a LinkedIn or Facebook or Trade Business page, but not having a complete biography or profile will not help you be found. In fact having incomplete profiles may lead a prospective client to wonder, “if he hasn’t completed that, will he complete what I want him to do?”
Here are my best bio-building tips:
A bio or your profile is not a one-size fits all. Adapt your profile and your bio to the audience you’re interacting with.
What are your highest value qualifications? Is there a particular niche for which you’d like to be known? Use those words in your bio. Think “Google search” when planning your business profile.
If you have specialized training, note that in your bio and especially on your website’s About Page.
Don’t forget, when you complete your bio that you have your contact information front and center. Don’t make a prospect have to become an amateur sleuth to find you!
Add a photo. If you’re in business, chances are you have access to a professional headshot or can get one. Don’t leave this blank.
Check your business profile and make sure it is complete.
With the new year soon to be upon us, it’s a time to reflect and and set resolutions for your upcoming successful year. The sad fact is that many people make resolutions only to see them fail. As I’d written in a previous post, “A goal unrealized can have the power to take you down a path of despair and the inability to complete other tasks on your list.” However, if you set a goal aka resolution and meet it, the success of that will feed further success and achievements.
How can you keep your resolutions? Here are three ways:
Write down the end goal. Break a large goal into bite sized chunks. Set deadlines to keep yourself on track. Build in a cushion and make allowances for interruptions and meetings you didn’t plan for.
Write a to-do list and feel power you realize when you cross a task off. Daily progress documentation keeps you on target amps up the motivation.
Find a trusted colleague to pair up with and work to keep each other on track. Report in several times a week. Share successes. Discuss setbacks. Move forward from a “failure” and look at it as a learning experience — ask your accountability partner to help you brainstorm potential reasons for and solutions to any deadlines you may have missed.
Blogging is one of those social media “fads” that is not going away. If you ever feel skeptical and wonder if there is any reason for you to be blogging, check our these statistics from Social Media Today about blogging:
Seventy percent of consumers find companies through blogs and online articles
A business that blogs generates 126% more leads than one that doesn’t
More than 60% of all consumers in the United States have make a purchase based on a blog post
These numbers don’t lie when it comes to reasons why you should take up the blogging mantle. If you don’t know where to begin, there are any number of blogging professionals (our company is one!) who can help you get started and keep going!
