I’m going to start with the definition of a business process –
Process – a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that serve a particular goal.
I took that definition from Wikipedia but it’s very straightforward if you do something in exactly the same way over and over again you will get the same outcome and that’s a process.
I want to remind you of the title of this article series is the Art and Science of Generating Leads. The difference between an Art and a Science is that in the science everything is replicable exactly, every single time that you do it. And art is not.
Generating leads is not always identically replicable. This is because markets change, economies evolve, your product or service may differ; the needs of your customers and prospective customers may be altering over time.
This does not mean that it is impossible to create a replicable process. But it does mean that you must acquire more skill than just following a series of “paint-by-numbers” tasks.
But you knew that didn’t you?
A business process gives an outcome
Let’s begin with working out the different steps that lead to an outcome. I’m going to give you an example from my own
BNI logo
business here. It’s Wednesday morning at 7 AM. I am in a cafe with a group of 32 other trusted business individuals who are all working to help me generate leads for my business. The group is called Business Networking International. We meet once a week in order to do our best to help each other win more customers. How we do it is a straightforward, replicable business process.
It’s a methodology developed by Dr Ivan Misner. He found it to be effective and set up a network. He’s grown it to over 180,000 members in many countries across the world. It is a tried and tested methodology for business owners to find a group of other business owners whose business is to help you find leads for your business.
Sounds extraordinary? Well it is.
I’m not going to tell Dr Misner’s story here, but suffice it to say at a certain stage in my business I found BNI to be a very useful discipline to help me establish a business process around finding new customers. I commend it to you and suggest you go and research the organisation today; their website is www.bni.com.
The new business development 8 step methodology is a process
In order to make a process you first need to ensure that you’ve got all of the component parts lined up and ready to work I will say that step eight is the actual process because you string together all the components.
Step one is Who are you and what do you do? and that’s the topic up next.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2016-02-26 09:00:092019-08-13 15:18:41What is the New Business process?
Landing pages are important to drive valuable conversions for your business as we wrote before, whether from current customers or new prospects. But designing the perfect landing page can take several weeks to accomplish.
Well, at least, it used to.
Enter Unbounce, a tool we are using to create beautifully designed landing pages, built to deliver easily measurable outcomes.
Yes, we know: there’s a ton of groundbreaking offers popping around on the internet every day, promising to be the Holy Grail of marketing. Luckily you have us to filter the noise and point you in the right direction! 🙂
Why we chose Unbounce Pages
This complete add-on tool has the advantage of offering quick creation and editing, cutting a lot of time from the development stage of the landing page strategy for our clients. Unbounce delivers agile results, not neglecting the “best practices” learned by the developers with intense market research. Every Unbounce landing page is completely mobile responsive, which means extra points for you in Google’s eyes.
Having a successful business on the internet is a tricky thing if you don’t focus on driving results with the right strategy. Among lots of features, Unbounce offers A/B tests and Google Analytics tracking that are amazing at collecting data and eliminating doubts in the decision-making process. It can all be integrated seamlessly into WordPress, Joomla and other CMS platforms, so the landing page doesn’t feel disconnected from the rest of your website. When a visitor gives you their e-mail address, it can automatically go to your new MailChimp highly-focused list for future prospects. Simple as that. Check out all the Unbounce integrations.
Build your mailing list
Do you feel like building a highly-focused list of contacts is what’s missing from your digital marketing strategy? Contact us right away.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/conversion-growth-unbounce-2.jpg321845Creative Agency Secrets Teamhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgCreative Agency Secrets Team2016-02-23 13:00:572022-12-19 11:57:14From attraction to traction: build your list with Unbounce landing pages
Landing pages are undoubtedly one of the most powerful features of your entire website. We’re willing to bet that, regardless of the purpose of your website, you have at least one landing page to filter your web traffic towards a purchase decision or other desired action. You don’t want to let your prospective customers slip away because your landing pages are ineffective, do you?
This got us thinking, “How effective are our own landing pages at driving action?” Further exploration of this question revealed our landing pages could, indeed, be better.
What makes an effective landing page?
Each landing page only serves a single purpose.
It should be stripped of the full range of information available on the rest of the website in order to focus the visitor. Having additional content on the page only distracts the visitor from the reason they arrived there and, thus, decreases the likelihood of a successful conversion.
Your landing page should also be able to accurately measure where your traffic is coming from and where they go next. Having too many variables on the page creates unnecessary complications in your analytics and reduces the effectiveness of the page.
Our old landing pages were visually outdated and cluttered with a stack of information that did not show clear actions.
We redesigned the landing pages for our 3 core offerings as a business – Marketing Services, Training and Free Marketing Advice.
Aside from an enhanced aesthetic make-over, which fits in perfectly with our branding and design, the pages now have a much clearer and appealing interface, outline the purpose of the page and make it even easier for visitors to find exactly what they need to take further action.
We compare the old and new versions of the same page:
Marketing education is a big part of our overall new business strategy. At Creative Agency Secrets we strive to find ways to connect with our potential clients and be a part of their marketing success whether they work with us or not. We hold complimentary marketing management and idea calls, host free marketing seminars, create appraisals for websites and so on. But what makes it all work is our ability to follow up with the people we meet and educate. It’s one of our core lead generation and client winning strategies, and it could work for your business as well.
What following up does for your business
Staying connected develops relationships between you and your prospective clients or friends. This means you build up a network of people who can use your services, direct you to new clients and endorse your work.
Here’s a case study of a sports equipment online retailer we manage marketing activities for called Space Saver Rowing Systems. The client was so impressed with our work that when their manufacturer started looking for marketing assistance, the client directed them to us.
In another example, we worked with Zeald website designers to host a free marketing event. From that connection we gained several new clients, among them – European Auto Spares. We followed up with them individually after the event.
We’ve got loads of these stories and all because we helped our contacts in their endeavours and kept up communications with them. In short, following up with people can net you leads and create a healthy flow of revenue for your business.
Keep the relationship flowing: the different ways we follow up
Meeting summaries for prospective clients – summaries are quite common, usually in the form of a dreary PDF or bullet-pointed word document. Along with that, we like to include anecdotes or a friendly sentence relating to something new we learned about the prospective client from that meeting. This gives those who joined the meeting more reason to read the email and even better, a reason to reply. To the right an example of a regular email following up a business meeting.
Something that we love to include in these that makes all the difference, is a link to one of our helpful blog posts or free eBooks. We look for a related topic in the email, then link a keyword or two and mention it may help. For example, if the email pertains to construction an email campaign, we might link to our cold emails eBook!
Newsletters – if you run a regular newsletter about your personal or company activities, invite your contacts to it. Make sure first that they’ll get something out of your blog posts and focus on explaining that to them. Newsletters don’t only inform, they help keep you and your business in the minds of others. This can make the difference between whether or not they think of you when new work arises. For an example, sign up to our newsletter list and see what you learn.
Related business – categorise your past clients and business friends by business type. This lets you update contacts in different industries on related updates to your activities or information you find. To make the most of this, as soon as you form a new business relationship you should create a related industry update alert via a tool like Google Alerts. This way you’re following the industries most related to your activities and the alerts remind you that you have a connection to that industry. Then you can report any exciting news you find straight to them.
Us? Well, we’ve created our subcontracted services listing for exactly this reason. It’s an activity we do whereby we list all the work we can’t do or isn’t related to our services, and those listings get picked up by other businesses with the right set of skills for the job. It’s a fairly simple information sharing activity but with huge potential impact. As a result, people loves connecting with us.
Follow them – if you keep up to date with the activities of your contacts you can provide more relevant input or updates. This is another exercise making sure you keep your follow ups linked to you with context as opposed to random email drops asking them how they are.
Daily tasks for this would include reading LinkedIn status updates. Weekly or monthly tasks include reading your contacts’ newsletters. One way we keep up with our industries and clients is by setting Google Alerts searching for company names. We also set an event on our Google Calendar that has a list of company websites and blogs to read up on in the description.
In Summary
Be diligent and consistent when you’re following up with people. Sometimes they are busy or skip emails, life gets in the way. Keep trying while not being too aggressive and you’ll grow on the minds of your clients and leads. Change up your approach to be more informative if a friendly nature doesn’t catch their eye. For example, you could direct them to tools or blog posts that will directly improve their way of business or provide them with a new opportunity. We posted up several examples of catch up emails and following leads through email that we’ve written previously to help you on your way.
Many of these ways to follow up with contacts can fit into your day to day activities, especially if you’re a marketing agency like us. If you spot yourself working on something that could help out some of your business contacts, send them an email and keep up to date. But more importantly – keep your business in their minds, and leading with a positive impression.
The blue icons opposite are part of our 8-Step New Business Development Methodology.
Click each icon to find more blog articles on the topic – educate yourself in modern marketing
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/not-a-mug.png300316Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2015-01-28 15:32:482020-01-24 01:44:57Financial advisors - give me your contact details
New Clues published in January and numbers 52-67 apply to our marketing communications world in particular. [see below]
Oh, and also pay attention to number 100
You want to know what to buy? The business that makes an object of desire is now the worst source of information about it. The best source is all of us.
It will be hard to adhere to them – because marketers are busy fouling their own nest, much as we did with banner adverts, SEO and oh-so-many other internet tools which we over-exploited so the makers ended up changing the rules to exclude our actions.
Seems to me ever more of a message about the quality of content, ease of discovery and honesty of presentation.
Your marketing strategy for 2015
If your marketing strategy for this year even remotely resembles what you did for the past 5 years tear it up. Forget it. The businesses who will thrive understand Cluetrain, they present their wares at least in part in a Cluetrain-format and will reap the $$ rewards accordingly.
Just call us if you think you want to change and don’t know how.
Rant over.
Now, what do you think?
I’m going to get my whole team to read Cluetrain original next week as their homework!
New Clues for Marketers
The New Clues that directly relate to the practice of marketing. Numbered from the original. Read more
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/cluetrain.png205139Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2015-01-27 11:29:392023-09-07 09:24:22Cluetrain has New Clues - time for newbies to read the original!
Email is a vital tool to growing your business. It’s non-invasive, interactive, and most of all – integral to business communications, so often get noticed.
One way to use email is through cold emailing, which is emailing to people you don’t know. It can come across as underhanded, but when done correctly it’s a marketing practice that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Find out about cold emails and how to write them in our free eBook…
Cold Emails – Doing it right and netting yourself leads
In this eBook, we’ll go through how to:
Write cold emails that encourage a response.
Tailor your cold emails to the right clients.
Personalise cold emails.
Looking for more insight on how to build great email campaigns, and sell directly to your audience? Contact Us!
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Christmas campaigns may seem like a gimmick, but they work. That’s because it’s a time of year where people are looking to buy and as a result, customers are far more communicative.
Hellmann’s Christmas Advert
Look reactionary by planning early
Planning early has many benefits. For example, you don’t want to get a campaign stopped behind bureaucratic doors and miss your chance to launch it at the best of times. If your campaigns are pre-approved you won’t miss those good opportunities to launch them when they come by.
Nothing says “viral campaign” like a relevant one that comes out as soon as a meme starts. Start planning your campaigns early, and plan multiple variations for different situations. Then all you need to do is keep your finger on the pulse throughout the run-up to Christmas period and unleash your chosen campaign when the best opportunity arises.
Here’re a few campaign ideas:
Relevant product promos – promo your 2015 calendar when advent calendars start getting popular.
“Still time to buy” reminders – customers often rush for purchases just 1 week before Christmas, so a little timely reminder can go a long way.
Discount codes & free delivery – while most common of Christmas campaigns, a time-liimited discount campaign is often short and sweet enough to catch more attention.
Extended returns period – take the “giving mood” approach and develop a relationship with your customers.
One things for sure, each campaign must decide on a clear goal. Review previous campaigns, check their strengths and weaknesses, then carefully plan out how you’ll support your campaign goals through action.
Focus on increasing dialogue with customers (not necessarily hard sales)
Christmas is a great time to develop customer relationships as well as just push sales. Use the increase of inbox opens and social media interactions to build your email lists and get more in touch with your customers. Outside of capturing emails you could also push feedback forms and surveys to capture behavioural data which can improve all your 2015 campaigns as well.
You could:
Simply wish Merry Christmas via email or pop-up box.
Run social media competitions that require email opt-ins, but instantly give a discount when a customer enters.
Re-engage with past buyers by offering them something special for doing business with you again.
Have fun and test out marketing platforms you wouldn’t normally use, potentially opening your exposure up to a whole new crowd.
Offer something DIFFERENT
Make an impact and stand out from the crowd by doing something different. Implementing a wishlist on your website (EXTRA: can use data for targeted mailing!), personalising your promotions and running some exciting social media competitions are a few ways to have your company look both professional, and interested in its customers.
The question you need to ask yourself now is – “what’s the best Christmas campaign for my business”?
7 steps for creating your Christmas marketing campaigns
STEP 1: Collect and assess behavioural data from past campaigns.
This should be as straight forward as going into a database and looking through campaign statistics. If you’re not doing this already, a simple excel spreadsheet and recording past campaign data should be your next course of action!
STEP 2: Think of 5 opportunities/ circumstances for sending campaigns.
These opportunities should be periods around Christmas (start of advent calendars, last week before Christmas, etc). Try to find opportunities that can easily be related to what you offer as a company.
STEP 3: Write up these campaigns.
Carefully plan out each campaign with action lists and then make sure you’ve got the content ready to go for each action.
STEP 4: Schedule campaigns that can be scheduled.
If your campaign is time dependent, schedule it and make an alert to remind you when it goes out. Once it is live, you should still have to take action (such as sharing your campaign via social media), so have that ready.
STEP 5: Create daily Google Alerts for topics that the remaining campaigns can react to.
If you’ve created some reactionary campaigns for the holidays, make sure you’ve got ways of identifying when they can best be activated. We use Google Alerts to track conversations so that we can react to them, and it’s a great way for looking for that perfect campaign launch opportunity.
STEP 7: Recap on all campaigns (analytics and assessment).
Once is all said and done, sit down and have a good look at the results of each campaign and how they went. This is very important as it will help you create more successful campaigns for the future!
Looking for fresh ideas and assistance on your Christmas marketing?
Drop us an email and we’ll be happy to brainstorm ideas for you!
