Effectively using your advertising dollars to find the right clients
Effectively using your advertising dollars to find the right clients
December 27, 2014 1 Comment on Effectively using your advertising dollars to find the right clientsThe longer you are in business, the more compelling it is to streamline the process of finding clients. Initially, you may not have refined your product or service down to the point of knowing exactly who you are looking for. Eventually, you do figure out it is important to find your niche of people who value what you have and are willing to pay for it because there are only so many hours in the day and energy in your reserves. Plus, it is much more enjoyable to work with someone who is looking for exactly what you do rather than trying to prove your value to someone that is questioning you at every turn.
When you first start your business, you are often bootstrapping the entire thing with your spare change and in your spare time. Of course, you can spend a ton of money to build a really cool website, but does that really draw people in? You can get started with almost nothing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many of the other social media apps. You can even create a pretty nice website using WordPress templates. Later, as your business is ramping up, it is more a matter of time. You want more clients and traditional advertising says just throw money at the problem, no time or much thinking required. Depending on your budget, you might get some spots on local radio stations, run a few ads in the newspaper or spend some money on Yelp or other specialized review sites (e.g. Zillow for real estate). Hopefully, you have some tracking in place to keep track of the dollars spent and effectiveness of each. For many specialized businesses, such generic advertising is not effective and often cost prohibitive because it is so inefficient.
This point is the crossroads where many businesses get stuck and yet this is the best time in history to be a small business because the internet and social media has leveled the playing field. In the past, big advertising firms and large corporations could afford to do all the market research to focus their marketing dollars. Now, you can do the same by leveraging the many tools out there. Of course, the variety of ways that people consume content is now so vast that it requires an entrepreneur to figure out how to best deliver content, so in many cases the small business can be more flexible than large corporations. On the flip side, often the best strategy is to publish on all platforms or pick a subset that best fits who you are trying to attract, so using a defined digital marketing strategy with the appropriate tools to help track and refine is necessary to keep your sanity unless you are a large marketing team at a corporation. Using tools like Infusionsoft to manage the campaign while leveraging web landing pages that convert with Lead Pages to an email newsletter on Aweber that drives people to your WordPress web site and blog, you can replace that large marketing team.
I often find that you have problems getting started because of picking the exact target for your message, but that is a topic for another day. Assuming you have all the demographics and sociographics dialed in, the most efficient marketing strategies use a combination of mobile-ready platform tools to get your message out. I’m also assuming that you’ve learned that creating your own custom content is also the key to getting noticed. Knowing your audience also helps since many more people seem willing to listen to something than read it and video can be even more effective. There are numerous tools in each. I’ve found the most effective methods include creating your own content and connecting to people via email, web, and social.
Of course, building your list is another key component. That is why the custom content is so important. It can take a while to build content and your list. Attracting your ideal client and keeping them engaged is critical. One of the cheapest ways is to use a Facebook “like” campaign with a custom audience. You can also engage more people by taking your favorite speaking topics and taking them to the web with teleseminars or webseminars. By recording these events, you can continue to build your content library. Regularly adding new content and posting to social media keeps people engaged.
With that said, let me know where you need some help. Could you use some help refining your niche and engaging with them? Are you dabbling with various advertising and marketing tools and strategies and could use some help deciphering the results? Are you struggling to create your own content or deliver it in all the ways your people expect it? Are you simply overwhelmed with where to even get started?
For me, it was about just getting started. I first created a Facebook business page and added my new business to my LinkedIn profile. I had Aralli build me a basic website with a WordPress template and teach me how to do some basic stuff. I started blogging and within six weeks published a book for Kindle and self-published a paperback with CreateSpace. I network through I Take the Lead and am the president of my local chamber of commerce. I’ve started doing guest speaker appearances for various groups, initially promoting my book. Over Thanksgiving, I added an email newsletter with Aweber and started using Twitter. Over Christmas, I started a Facebook like campaign. I also held and recorded a teleseminar recently. Shortly, I plan to add Lead Pages and Infusionsoft into the mix. An interesting tool for engagement on Facebook is HEYO that I’m still considering.
I also finished my 2015 planning last week, complete with an Inspired Action theme.
1 Comment
Howdy! This is my 1st comment here so I just wanted to give
a quick shout out and say I genuinely enjoy reading through your blog posts.
Can you suggest any other blogs/websites/forums that go over the
same topics? Appreciate it!