The Three Biggest Lead
Generation Mistakes Small Businesses Make And How To Overcome Them
If you've been looking for simple, proven and
tested, step-by-step methods for generating more leads for your small business,
then this article may just have the answer. Firstly, I want you to stop for a
moment and think about all the advertising you've seen over the past week.
How many of those actual ads can you name?
Researchers estimate that over the past seven days, you have been exposed to as
many as 117,000 ads based on national averages. So out of 117,000 ads, how many
can you name?
If you're fairly attentive, you may be able to
come up with 3 or 4 specific ads... but I'll bet that's because you probably
see those ads over and over... week in and week out. Let's face the facts...
repetition works. When you see any advertisement multiple times every day
you're bound to eventually begin to recall the ad. But now answer this
question.
What few ads you do remember, how many of
their products or services have you bought? Because I have a passion for
marketing I tend to go online and research for well accepted ads. Take for
example a series of ads from online trading company E*Trade which uses babies
to promote their products. These have a massive audience on both TV and
YouTube. They even had one during the Superbowl. I think they're a scream.
But... I don't have an E*Trade account. Never have, never will. Why should I?
What benefits do they offer me as a potential
buyer of online trading services that any of the hundreds of other stock
trading services offer? See my point? Does a smart-aleck, wise-cracking baby
have any relevance to online stock trading whatsoever? Of course not. So why
does E*Trade continue to make these commercials? Believe it or not, there is a
reason... and by the end of this short presentation, you'll fully understand what
that reason is.
Businesses today are led to believe that all
they have to do to build a successful business is create some type of
attention-grabbing form of marketing and they will generate leads at will.
Nothing could be further from the truth. And that's just in the area of
marketing. What about generating fast cash flow? EVERY small business needs to
generate fast cash flow. So how do you do that as a small business owner? What
about generating profits? Generating more cash flow is great... but not if you
don't get to put any of it in your pocket at the end of the day. How would you
like the answers to all of these problems?
In this article I am going to reveal to you
the three biggest lead generation mistakes small business owners make... and
outline how you can overcome them.
Here are the three mistakes. Mistake #1...
they fail to get professional help. Mistake #2... they don't know the
fundamentals required to successfully market their business and attract as many
new clients as their business can handle. And mistake #3... they have no idea
how to use their marketing to generate immediate cash flow. Let's explore these
three in depth, and show you how you can easily and systematically overcome
each one of them.
Mistake #1... small business owners fail to
get professional help. Can you name me just one professional athlete who does
NOT have a coach? There aren't any. Tiger Woods actually has a total of 9
coaches guiding him in everything from his golf game to his financial
investments. But do small business owners really need professional help?
Remember the TV ads we previously discussed? Those ads are created by
"professionals." Unfortunately, those professionals have no clue what
they're doing. Everything they're doing in marketing and advertising today is
wrong! But let me prove that to you right now.
If you currently use any form of marketing
such as a print ad, brochure, postcard, flyer... or for that matter... your
company website, take it out and look at it carefully. And if you don't have
any form of marketing right now, take out a sheet of paper and sketch out what
you think would make for an effective ad for your business. It doesn't have to
be anything formal or fancy... just create a basic outline of the ad and where
you would locate the various elements on the page.
Now that you have your ad... or a mock up of
your ad sitting in front of you, let me provide you with the little known
secrets that produce more leads than your business can handle. 99% of all
marketing professionals DON'T know the lead generation secrets I'm about to
reveal to you. This information is so powerful and compelling, it will position
you in the top 1% of all lead generation professionals today. This example will
show you why every small business owner should acquire our step-by-step roadmap
as they start to generate leads for their business.
Here's what a true marketing professional will
know... and help you implement into your marketing. It's known as the
"marketing equation." This marketing equation will let you quit competing
on price... and let you start selling your product or service for what it's
really worth. You will drive in more leads and increase your advertising
response by 10 to more than 100 times. You will convert a higher percentage of
those leads and dramatically increase your number of sales. You will get a
bigger bang for your marketing buck. The bottom line is this you will literally
create a profit faucet that you will have TOTAL control over.
First, you MUST understand what marketing is
supposed to do. Its purpose is actually three fold. Its first job is to capture
the attention of your target market. Second, it must give them the hope that
reading or listening to your marketing will give them enough information to
help them make the best decision possible when buying whatever you sell. In
other words, train and teach them how to recognize the true value of your
product or service... and conclude that you... and you alone... offer the best
value versus your competition. Marketing's third job is to lower the risk of
taking the next step in the buying process... and if necessary... continue to
educate the prospect regarding the value you offer.
Marketing that accomplishes these three
objectives will result in your prospects and customers coming to one single
conclusion, that they would have to be an absolute fool to do business with
anyone else but you, regardless of price. It's estimated that as many as 96% of
all small businesses fail within their first 5 years. The main reason for this
tremendously high failure rate has to do with the lack of expertise when it
comes to generating leads and making the phone ring.
Most small businesses don't know anything
about those three things that marketing is supposed to do. But there's also an
additional problem to consider. Most small business owners use a tactical
marketing approach instead of a strategic approach. Let me explain.
Running an ad in the local newspaper...
sending out an email or direct mail letter... airing a radio or TV ad on a
local media station are all examples of tactical marketing. Now don't get me
wrong... the newspaper, radio or direct mail can be successful marketing
channels... If your marketing message is powerful and compelling. But that's
the problem... the message is the strategic side of marketing... and yet, it's
the most neglected.
This distinction between strategic and
tactical marketing is huge and one you need to be acutely aware of anytime you
start talking about generating more leads. Many companies mistakenly assume
that when you talk about lead generation, you're automatically talking about
tactical lead generation... placing ads, sending out mailers, joining a
networking group, attending tradeshows, implementing a prospect follow up
system and so on.
They fail to realize that the strategic side
of the coin, what you say in your marketing and how you say it is almost always
more important than the marketing medium where you say it. If you fail to make
this distinction, then you risk becoming jaded towards certain forms of marketing
and advertising that should be a part of your tactical plan, but you eliminate
them from consideration because they haven't worked for you in the past.
When lead generation results are less than
optimal, small business owners tend to almost always blame the marketing
medium... like the newspaper the ad ran in or the postcards they sent out. They
blame the tactical part of the plan... without any regard for how good or how
bad the strategic messaging in that marketing piece was. People often say
things like, "we tried radio and it doesn't work for our kind of
business," or "we sent out 50,000 pieces of direct mail and only
generated 3 orders. It just doesn't work."
Just because it didn't work, don't assume that
it won't work. Most people don't have the evaluation skills or the know-how to
judge whether poor marketing results from poor strategy or poor tactical
execution. This is where our step-by-step roadmap can generate more leads than
your business can handle.
For example, most small business owners rely heavily
on platitudes in their marketing. They say things like - we have the lowest
prices... the best service... we're family owned and operated... we offer
convenient hours... the best value... not to mention that we've been in
business since 1431 B.C. Look at your own marketing that I asked you to acquire
or create earlier. How many platitudes did you use in your own marketing?
By the way, this is NOT your fault. Small
business owners have been conditioned to think this is the proper way to market
their businesses... since most advertising follows this same pathetic marketing
formula... including the Fortune 500 types.
As human beings, we're all after just one
thing when we buy something... the best deal! Unfortunately, when you use
platitudes in your marketing, there's absolutely no way to tell who is actually
offering the best deal. Everyone says they have the lowest prices, the highest
quality and the best rates. So who do you believe? There's only one way to
know... and that's to research every single business that offers what you want
to buy. How many of us have the time or patience to do that?
So most of us just automatically assume that
everyone is pretty much the same, and therefore we default to calling on the
business that offers us the lowest price. When you can't communicate the true
value your business offers, you're doomed to forever compete on price. Our
marketing equation will change all of that for you forever. It's going to be
the backbone of your strategic marketing plan. It's the foundation on which
everything else we build for you is based. Let me give you a quick overview and
then spend some time going through it with you in detail.
A proper marketing equation has four main
components. First, it must interrupt your prospects. It must get your qualified
prospect to pay attention to your lead generation marketing. Simple enough to
say, but a lot more difficult to pull off in real life unless you understand
what you're about to learn here. The interrupt is done through your headline if
your marketing is in print... or it's the first thing you say if your marketing
through radio or TV. The second component is engage. Once your prospect is
interrupted, it's critical you give your reader the promise that information is
forthcoming that will help the prospect make the best buying decision possible.
In other words, it must help facilitate their decision to pick you over anyone
else. This is the job of our subheadline.
The interrupt is our headline that highlights
a specific problem that your prospects are looking for a solution to... and the
engage is our subheadline that promises them that you offer a solution to the
problem we mentioned in our headline.
The third component you need to include is
'educate'. Once you have interrupted and engaged your prospect, you have to
give information that allows them to logically understand how and why you solve
the problem they're facing. This is accomplished by giving detailed,
quantifiable, specific and revealing information. This is typically done in the
body copy of your ad. When you educate, you need to reveal to your prospects
the important and relevant information they need to know when making a good
decision, and that your business... and yours alone... provides it to them. The
interrupt and engage hit the prospects emotional hot buttons. Educate is the
logic they need to justify picking up the phone and calling you.
The fourth and final component of the
marketing equation is your offer. Now that you have interrupted your prospect
based on problems that are important to them... engaged by a promise of the
solution... and they've examined the educational information that makes your
solution real and believable... the last step you need to take is to give them
a low risk way to take the next step in your sales process. You do this by
offering a free marketing tool, such as a report, brochure, seminar, audio,
video or something that will continue to educate them. Your offer will allow
your prospect to feel in control of their final decision to call and buy from
you.
So your marketing equation is interrupt,
engage, educate and offer and together they equal market domination. Now here's
the problem. Most marketing today only contains two of these components. They
interrupt by throwing something at you that's either familiar like Tiger
Woods... or unusual like a monkey or talking pets. Sometimes they like to use
both, as in the case of the E*Trade baby. Then once they grab your attention,
they make you some type of offer such as "call now for whatever."
They have left out the engage and the educate, and marketing seldom succeeds
when that happens.
In fact, the only time this type of marketing
does succeed is when you can afford to run the ad over and over nonstop for an
extended period of time. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz... melts in your mouth, not in
your hand... and the burgers are better at... have literally been rammed down
our throats by Fortune 500 types. After hearing these slogans thousands of
times, of course we're going to remember them. But how can a small business owner
like you that doesn't have a billion dollar marketing budget successfully
market your business. The answer... you can't... UNLESS you follow the entire
marketing equation.
And finally the third biggest mistake small
business owners make is that they have no idea how to use their marketing to
generate immediate cash flow. When you follow this marketing equation in every
form of marketing you do... from your business cards to your company website,
the financial results are instantaneous and immediate.
So in conclusion, the three biggest lead
generation mistakes small businesses make are #1... they fail to get
professional help. #2... they don't know the fundamentals required to
successfully market their business and attract as many new clients as their business
can handle. And #3... they have no idea how to use their marketing to generate
immediate cash flow.
The above marketing equation contains the
fundamental components for instantly making your phone ring and positioning
your business as the dominant force in your market. It provides the marketing
foundation that will enable you to generate immediate cash flow. And small
businesses can use this information as a minimum standard when seeking out
professional help for their business.
When you can overcome these three biggest lead
generation mistakes, you will generate all the leads your business can handle.
This marketing equation is part of our
E-Learning Marketing Academy. Take a free tour at
[http://www.profitgrowthspecialists.com/guidedtour]
