Rather than
doing less-effective "shotgun" mailings to rented lists, consider
repeat mailings targeted at known prospects (such as past inquirers).
If you don't have your own e-mail
lists to market to, consider renting e-mail lists from publishers or placing
ads in other targeted e-newsletters or e-zines. These can be very economical
ways to reach your market and generate a quick response.
Edit your
releases with the magazine's editorial focus, style and readers in mind and
you'll increase the chance the publication or Web site will publish your
information.
Web sites
A few cost-effective changes can
dramatically improve your corporate Web site's marketing return on investment.
To increase inquiries from your Web site's visitors, Make offers or
calls-to-action on every page. Work with other organizations to link your site
to their sites, increasing the number of visitors to yours. Register your web
site with search engines, selecting keywords carefully so your site will appear
in the search results for your intended audience. Post articles and case
studies on your site, then register those individual web pages with the search
engines.
Strategy
7.
Determine the "pain" your products
and services address
8.
Determine the "pain relief" your
company can provide
9.
Determine your company's competitive
advantages and how best to articulate them
10. Determine the best companies and contacts to target with your lead
generation efforts
Testimonial ads are king
Talk first person with the reader
Use words in your copy like
"you" and "your" to focus on the readers' needs rather than
boasting about how good "we" and "our" products or services
are. For example, the statement "You will get the work done 25%
quicker" is much stronger than "Our product is 25% faster than the
competition."
The best way
to boost direct mail response is to have a strong offer—that is, a targeted
offer that will entice prospects to respond.
Successful direct mail marketers
understand that campaign success relies on the list and the offer. Determine
why you're mailing to people, and then ensure that your list and offer support
your objective. Your response rate will be much higher in terms of
"qualified" inquiries.
, it is much better to have in the
database 10 individuals at each of 1,000 companies than to have one individual
at 10,000 firms.
If you need additional demographic
information about the contacts' or companies' industry, size, etc. for your
direct marketing solutions, check with some of the business database companies
like Dunn & Bradstreet (www.dnb.com) or InfoUSA.com (www.infousa.com). Or
contact the publishers of the trade magazines you advertise in. They usually
offer database services to their advertisers.
All leads and business cards go into your CRM system ASAP
Think about offers you can make that
will entice visitors to identify and qualify themselves. Can you create a free
guide for selecting your kinds of products or services? Can you offer a white
paper that explains how their kind of operation is successfully using your
product or service to solve problems? If so, use it as bait for having your
visitors share their names, titles, company names and contact information.
Email
If you have
email addresses for your prospects and customers, but they haven't expressed
interest in hearing from your company by email, be sure to politely ask their
permission before starting a campaign. I recommend that you ask them how they
prefer to be contacted. By email? Fax? Snail mail? Telephone?
Directories
Print directories are handy, and
online directories are always up to date. Most directory publishers are
publishing both, frequently offering you exposure in both mediums for the same
price. Keep in mind that directories are often where buyers look when they are
seeking new suppliers and have immediate needs.
Web
site
· The size of organizations your company serves? large? medium? small?
· The geographies you serve? local areas? states? countries? regions of
the world?
· Explain why your company is a better choice than the competition?
· Address your prospective customers' needs from their point of view?
· Did you include the more popular keywords and phrases in your
· URLs?
· Page titles?
· Headlines?
· Body copy?
· Text links?
· Are you loading your text before your graphics and Flash animations in
the source code of your various web pages?
· Are you giving your graphics file names that include relevant
keywords?
Are you including keywords and phrases in
<alt> tags for each of your graphics?
· Have you included a site map on your home page, pointing to all of
your site's individual pages?
· Does your site map include lots of keywords and phrases in the page
links and descriptive copy for each page of your Web site?
Add privacy
· Have you included a link to your Web site in every appropriate online
directory you can find?
· Adding new pages to your site that include in-depth content related to
the most popular relevant keywords and phrases?
· Consider using pay-per-click ads as a temporary solution while you
work to optimize your Web site for organic searching.
First, I believe
you should focus on optimizing your website for visitors, helping them move
from awareness to consideration to inquiry to purchase, before you worry about
search engine optimization (SEO). Learn more at the Team AVS Website
No comments:
Post a Comment