I spend a lot of time helping our clients set up web-based lead generation mechanisms, but there is a very important offline strategy which I would recommend to any business:
A monthly newsletter.
I'm not talking about the trite B.S. that passes for most company newsletters (if they publish anything at all), but rather relevant information and advice that your prospects WANT to tear open and absorb the moment they receive it in the mail.
If your business is in an industry where high transaction values are the norm, publishing a newsletter is especially important (and can lead to very tangible rewards).
It doesn't have to be incredibly complicated; three or four pages of original content and some choice reprints can make a newsletter which will be interesting to your prospects.
Yes, putting it together involves an investment of time or money, but the returns can be well worth it. One concept I enlarged upon in one of my print newsletters to a client directly resulted in a $72,000 contract. Maybe I would have got the work anyway, but I would rather have it sooner rather than later
Once you've put together the newsletter, printing postage costs are not very high; a few dollars per issue at most.
Again, depending on your industry, you can even make the whole process cashflow positive by selling subscriptions to non-clients for, say, $37 per month on a good-till-cancelled basis. As long as you can create enough value to make the subscription price pales in comparison, it's a goer. 1,000 subscribers @ $37 per month equals a $444,000 annual revenue stream. Sure, getting 1,000 people to sign up to your newsletter isn't easy - you have to be great at what you do and great at marketing what you do.
However, even if you were about to get enough subscribers to make the newsletter pay for itself, this would still be a great thing.
No, this will come off as heretical from a 'internet guy' like me, but sometimes email is not the tool you need. While it's perfectly good for keeping contact with prospects, once you have a paying clientele, a print newsletter is a good way to go - and an economically viable one.
Your customers can hold print newsletters in their hands, mark them up and annotate them, circulate them around the office with Post-It notes attached, and most importantly, NOT delete them from their overstuffed email inboxes (although the wastepaper basket is always within easy reach, so you have to be good.)
One way to test the waters with a print newsletter is to decide on a certain number of issues (either 6 or 12 is a good choice) and commit to this number. If it doesn't perform as you expected, you can pull the plug with no harm done - and you'll have some autoresponder material ready to go for the future.
If you don't have the time to co-ordinate this, speak to a copywriting or marketing agency who can handle the whole strategy for you. (I'm even considering offering this as a packaged service to clients, but I'm not actively marketing this at the moment).
Publishing a newsletter is certainly worth a try and the results can be impressive.
A monthly newsletter.
I'm not talking about the trite B.S. that passes for most company newsletters (if they publish anything at all), but rather relevant information and advice that your prospects WANT to tear open and absorb the moment they receive it in the mail.
If your business is in an industry where high transaction values are the norm, publishing a newsletter is especially important (and can lead to very tangible rewards).
It doesn't have to be incredibly complicated; three or four pages of original content and some choice reprints can make a newsletter which will be interesting to your prospects.
Yes, putting it together involves an investment of time or money, but the returns can be well worth it. One concept I enlarged upon in one of my print newsletters to a client directly resulted in a $72,000 contract. Maybe I would have got the work anyway, but I would rather have it sooner rather than later
Once you've put together the newsletter, printing postage costs are not very high; a few dollars per issue at most.
Again, depending on your industry, you can even make the whole process cashflow positive by selling subscriptions to non-clients for, say, $37 per month on a good-till-cancelled basis. As long as you can create enough value to make the subscription price pales in comparison, it's a goer. 1,000 subscribers @ $37 per month equals a $444,000 annual revenue stream. Sure, getting 1,000 people to sign up to your newsletter isn't easy - you have to be great at what you do and great at marketing what you do.
However, even if you were about to get enough subscribers to make the newsletter pay for itself, this would still be a great thing.
No, this will come off as heretical from a 'internet guy' like me, but sometimes email is not the tool you need. While it's perfectly good for keeping contact with prospects, once you have a paying clientele, a print newsletter is a good way to go - and an economically viable one.
Your customers can hold print newsletters in their hands, mark them up and annotate them, circulate them around the office with Post-It notes attached, and most importantly, NOT delete them from their overstuffed email inboxes (although the wastepaper basket is always within easy reach, so you have to be good.)
One way to test the waters with a print newsletter is to decide on a certain number of issues (either 6 or 12 is a good choice) and commit to this number. If it doesn't perform as you expected, you can pull the plug with no harm done - and you'll have some autoresponder material ready to go for the future.
If you don't have the time to co-ordinate this, speak to a copywriting or marketing agency who can handle the whole strategy for you. (I'm even considering offering this as a packaged service to clients, but I'm not actively marketing this at the moment).
Publishing a newsletter is certainly worth a try and the results can be impressive.
About the Author:
About the author: David B. Ascot gives advice on sales lead generation strategies that will assist your company to benefit from profitable online lead generation.
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