Grow Your Business In 5 Days

TUTORIAL #8: KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS

Hello and welcome to ‘Grow Your Business In 5 Days’.

In this tutorial you’re going to discover how to multiply the number of enquiries you get, simply by contacting your target market more often, an area often overlooked or simply ignored by most businesses.

There has been much debate about how many times prospects should be contacted. There is no definitive answer, but what we do know is it needs to be more than once – many more.

To explain why you need multiple contacts, you need to first understand a little-known, but proven phenomenon that exists in EVERY market and industry, and the impact it will have on the number of enquiries and ultimately new customers you get.

So let’s start with a simple question…

How many times a year do you currently contact your target market? If it’s any number less than 12 you’re turning away new customers. It is highly unlikely that you will have sent a marketing piece to any of your potential customers EVERY month – indeed our research has shown that businesses that do bother to market to their potential customers, on average only send 1 or 2 pieces a year to them.

THIS IS ANOTHER REASON WHY MOST MARKETING DOESN’T WORK!

Tests have proved that repetitive marketing yields far greater returns than ad-hoc, once every now and again marketing. That’s why our recommendation is for you to send a marketing piece once a month to your potential customers, or at least once every other month. This will give you by far the best results.

Why does this work so well?

Repetitive marketing takes advantage of what we call the ‘The Moving Parade’. It exists in every market (not just yours), but fewer than 1 in 10,000 businesses are aware of it, or how to use it to grow their businesses. So what is ‘The Moving Parade’ and how can you use it to your advantage?

Selling any product or service is all about timing. Just because someone isn’t interested in buying the product or service today, it doesn’t mean they aren’t going to be interested tomorrow. That is in essence what ‘The Moving Parade’ is all about. Let me explain this further using a simple example…

Let’s say that at the moment you’re really happy with your car. You’ve got no intention of changing it. Therefore every advert, every mailing or any contact you have with a car dealer or car manufacturer is wasted on you. Letters go in the bin without a second thought. You pick up your newspaper when car adverts come on TV. And you skip any car ads in any magazines you read. You simply aren’t interested. And nothing will prompt you at this stage to even consider changing your car.

However, three months later your circumstances have changed. You need to do more travelling, and so you decide it’s time to look for a more suitable car. Now every mailing, advert, or communication to do with cars is instantly given attention by you. You’re ‘in the market’ for a new car and you develop an insatiable appetite to find out as much as you can about the cars that would suit you best. Now, this happens all day, every day, as people buy products and services.

If you don’t keep in touch regularly with your prospects (and customers for that matter) you’ll never get ‘lucky’ as people move in and out of the market, as their circumstances change. By keeping in contact at least once a month the chance that you will hit the prospect at the right time is increased significantly.
That obviously means you need a good supply of powerful marketing pieces across online and offline media to send to your target market every other month. Of course the BGS Vault not only contains the marketing pieces but also how and when to use them.

The fear that many business owners have is that they will be seen to be somehow ‘unprofessional’ by bombarding their target market with too many marketing messages. Well, I have news for you...
Thoughtful use of your marketing pieces will only improve your target market’s perception of your business. So providing you do this correctly then you can only win – and win BIG!

This is one of the most important things you can learn when growing your business. The Moving Parade is such an important phenomenon that you have to use it to your advantage.

The only way to do that is to set up a frequency of contact that takes away the ‘luck’ factor and instead enables you to have a contact strategy that maximises the chances of you ‘catching’ someone, when they’re thinking of buying your product or service or when they’re thinking of changing suppliers.

The Moving Parade – What It Looks Like

Remember, you have no way of knowing when a prospect’s circumstances are about to change. But no matter what the circumstance, you have to  give yourself the best chance of getting the customer.

The only way to do that is to get your businesses name in front of them at regular intervals throughout the year. That’s the only way we know how to get ‘lucky’. But it does work! With one marketing piece you may only get 0.5% or less as a response. But with 12 or more well-constructed marketing pieces, strategically sent to the prospect throughout the year, responses will multiply. Of course you will need to factor in any seasonality you have in your industry, but sending at least one marketing piece a month will stand you in good stead.

And one of the best things to achieve this, is by offering a printed monthly newsletter. As you can imagine, like many successful approaches, there is an ‘art’ and ‘science’ to a great monthly newsletter…
Get the mix of the correct ingredients just right …and you will have a terrific way to lock-in existing clients AND acquire new ones too.

But this isn’t some recipe you can rush or throw together in a haphazard way. Having said that, there are a few proven rules which make producing a monthly printed newsletter easier and ensure it achieves the desired result…

First, whilst an 8-page newsletter is the best size, just start with 4 pages. This will ensure you can produce it each month without it becoming a mill stone around your neck. Second, your newsletter needs a great title. Give it a name that makes people think ‘this looks interesting, I wonder what it’s all about’.
Third, don’t fill it with industry news. Sure you can use a small amount of space for updates but don’t overwhelm the newsletter with technical stuff. Your readers don’t care about this. Fourth, don’t be frightened to give them a lot of the detail. This is something many people are worried about. But believe me, giving great content is key to getting readership and for establishing you as an expert in your industry.

Fifth, to improve reader involvement use puzzles, cryptic questions, and funny stuff, like cartoons. All these things humanise your business and get the recipients actively engaged in your newsletter which leads to better results. Sixth, don’t put your newsletter in a normal envelope. Put it in a clear polythene envelope. As long as your newsletter title and the articles are appealing – you’ll significantly increase the likelihood of it being opened, read and acted upon. And finally, your newsletter should be mailed the good old fashioned way, rather than emailed. It’s tempting to use email, because of the cost saving, but your results explode when you mail it.

As an organisation, we write and print several newsletters each month. We know what it takes to get results. Most of them are paid subscription newsletters, so the content and style for these needs to be slightly different, but ‘The Business Builder Newsletter’ is the one we create for our accounting members.
This newsletter follows all the ingredients I’ve just spoken about and it works beautifully to bring in new clients and keep existing ones happy!

Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the power of having a monthly newsletter. Not only will it help you attract many more customers, it will also help you retain and maximise sales and profits from existing customers.

So let’s recap...

Here are the key learning points from this tutorial...

1.  First... to multiply the number of enquiries from your target market you must contact them at least once every month. This helps you get ‘lucky’ with your timing and takes advantage of the Moving Parade.

2.  Second... each contact must be with a stand out marketing piece like the ones we discussed in the previous tutorial, as well as, ideally a printed monthly newsletter.

3.  And fourth... you can invest thousands creating and testing your own series of marketing materials, or you can join our BGS Vault and get instant access to dozens of proven marketing pieces and our newsletter module that both wow your prospects and customers and ethically force them to buy more from you. For more details, simply enter your name and e-mail address in the boxes on the right of this page and watch the video. (Note that as a client of this firm you can have immediate and free access to the Business Growth System Vault. It’s valued at over $6,000 per annum and to get access just contact the office today.)

Now please DOWNLOAD the ‘One Page Action Plan’ that accompanies this tutorial and start putting in place your own target market contact strategy. Thank you.

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