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Building your Internet marketing machine
If you are like most of the business owners I know, you want to grow your business but are already doing everything you can think of to make that happen. You're working hard to identify new suspects and prospects – you speak and network regularly at industry events, exhibit at trade and professional association meetings and shows, perhaps you've even invested in optimizing your website for search engine indexing in order to attract more online visitors.
But, my question to you is – What are you doing to cultivate all these suspects and prospects once you've identified them?
Thinking back to my corporate days I remember returning from industry events with the proverbial shoebox full of contact information on hundreds of leads and no efficient, measurable way of cultivating these leads until they were ready for a sales call. Sound familiar?
With the advent of the Internet both large and small companies alike have new and exciting options for staying connected with "cool" leads, working them until they warm sufficiently to warrant a sales call. By creating an Internet-based marketing machine you can put into place a system that works for you 24 x 7, long after you have called it a day.
The core of this 2-cylinder marketing engine is a professional website that presents your products and services in a way that resonates with your audience and helps them visualize how you can help them solve their problems and achieve new heights, whatever those may be. Prepare content for your website that reflects your knowledge and understanding of the needs and concerns of your prospects and clients. Refreshing your website content on a regular basis will ensure that visitors can find something new and of value each time they visit.
The second cylinder is a consistent, quality, email-based communication program that proactively connects you with your contacts on a regular basis and drives readers to your website to gather additional information or take some other action, like signing-up for a teleclass or webinar. Using email instead of print makes such a program affordable for everyone, including those with very limited marketing budgets. Make sure you collect email addresses when you are prospecting, and use an email service that provides you with the performance data and functionality you need, such as open and click-through data, to easily conduct targeted, follow-up campaigns or sales calls, as appropriate.
With these two elements of your marketing plan in place, you are now able to cultivate the leads you generate through all of your other marketing programs and activities. By integrating your website and email program into a coordinated system you, too, can build a marketing machine that continues working for you and your company long after you have called it a day and gone home.
