Marketing on the internet for bricks and mortar businesses
A great marketing machine is one that captures the maximum number of passing visitors then adds them to your repeat sales system where you constantly engage, educate and up-sell them.
Every business has a marketing machine. It includes everything that attracts customers to you and everything that encourages them to do repeat business with you.
If you design it, tweak it and tune it, it will consistently deliver a growing number of prospects and customers. If you don’t it will work by accident and your business will always do what it has always done.
Which Source?
New prospects can arrive via anything from word of mouth to Google searches to YouTube.
The list is huge (see the diagram) and with this many potential sources of customers, it’s easy to become a “Jack of all opportunities” and a master of none.
Avoid “I have to get on Facebook or my business is lost” thinking and figure out the 2 or 3 sources that are most likely to give you the best return for the least amount of your time and money.
Prioritise them and focus on them. Develop one opportunity at a time.
Never start developing the next opportunity until the current one is working well – or you’ve written it off as ineffective because you’ve tested every conceivable combination.
If one source brings you a lot of business, never stop improving it because it’s ‘finished’. Spend time improving it regularly and it will be the gift that never stops giving.
Balance Your Marketing Machine
When working well, the back end of your marketing machine (repeat business) will probably produce more profit than the front end (prospecting).
But it’s chicken versus egg. You need new prospects to feed repeat business, and too many new prospects without repeat business is just wasteful due to low conversion rates.
So a balanced marketing machine performs best. Spend half your marketing time and budget attracting new enquiries and the other half building repeat business.
Repeat to Convert
The less you ask for the more you sell. So don’t ask a prospect who just met you to buy your most expensive product. You’ll simply lose them as a prospect.
Instead offer them something of high value to them and low cost to you. And ask only for their email address.
Now you can build a relationship and sell to them as often as you like.
Because you get to sell to them over and over again, we can conservatively predict that you’ll double your conversion rate.
That’s a 200% increase.
Engage your readers and you’ll sell more. Give them regular value so they look forward to hearing from you. It might be tips, special offers, events or participation in your forum or Facebook page.
As you build a relationship they’ll trust you more and are twice as likely to buy from you. Actually, people are 3 or 4 times more likely to buy from a business they trust, but we’re being conservative.
200% x 2 is a 400% increase.
People can’t buy what they don’t know about. So constantly educate your prospects and customers about your full range of products and services. Tell them about new products and services, how you’ve helped other customers and remind them about your bread and butter services which they may have forgotten about.
The more they know, the more they buy. If they know twice as much about your product range, that’s what they’ll buy.
That makes 800%.
Most people either under sell or over sell. Find the right balance and your conversion rate can double again.
Regular up-selling can take many forms. A special offer, an educational article about something you sell, or a simple call to action like “call us for assistance with your next email marketing campaign”. Or you could follow your main article with an announcement for a related service (see our example below).
They key is to ALWAYS tell your readers how you can help them.
That brings us to 1600%.
Big Value Grows Big Mailing Lists
The bottom line with mailing lists is the more value you give your prospect in return for their email address, the more email addresses you get.
So find something of huge value to them and little cost to you. It might be a free report or information product, entry in the draw for an amazing prize or a free evaluation which you can mostly automate.
Every business has something amazing to give so find yours and give it away. Your mailing list will reward you for it.
I’ve help mailing lists to increase their rate of growth by 400% with the right methods. Doubling yours IS realistic.
That brings us to 3200%.
So get your prospects onto your mailing list. Engage them regularly. Educate them and up-sell to them.
Can you afford not to develop your marketing machine?