Are you an individual business professional that is responsible for generating and managing your own leads? Are you FRUSTRATED with the constant “swings” in income and production? One month you are making great money, and the next month you wonder how you are going to pay the rent. You have to generate leads, manage those leads, and talk to paying prospects. It seems like a vicious circle- You market and generate leads to find prospects. You find a prospect to talk to, and then have no time to manage or generate any other incoming leads. Therefore, when you are finished with your current prospect, you have no one else to talk to! If you can relate to the few sentences above, you are not alone.
In this “new economy” marketing and lead generation is a big challenge for the individual business professional. Many Americans are not willing to spend money as “freely” as they were before. Likewise, many business professionals had to “tighten” their marketing budget and reduce lead generation spending. In addition, many of them commonly make some very BIG MISTAKES when it comes to marketing and lead generation, and that makes the difference between huge success, or giant failure. So, get ready because I’m about to reveal the 3 deadly sins that individual business professionals are currently making when it comes to marketing and lead generation in today’s economy.
A) Ineffective lead generation pieces – when creating a lead generation piece it must be comprised of several components. Two of the most important components a lead generation piece should have is a deadline and an offer. So for example if you are selling “widgets,” your ad that reads, “widgets on sale now, great prices, call today,” is not an offer. Your ad should read more like “25% off all widgets. Must call before July 25, 2010.” As an added bonus to help increase response, put what is called a secondary reason for response. For example in your ad say “be one of the first 25 people to buy widgets and get a free gift valued at $27.”
B) No follow up system- I can’t tell you the number of individuals that spend money to generate leads, and then have no idea what to say or do when a prospect responds! Furthermore, most individuals talk to the prospect once, maybe mail them once or twice, and then just give up. It might help you to know that most people do not buy anything at all until at least the 5th contact. So, the next time you consider a lead generation campaign, you might want to consider how many “follow up” steps you have to support it.
C) Spending money on brand marketing- Unless you have millions of dollars to spend (and maybe more) on “branding” your company, you might as well roll the window of your car down and start throwing out $100 bills. Your marketing and lead generation results will be the same, in that you will probably not find any “paying clients” this way. I refer to people who like to “brand “market as “marketing victims.” These are people who spend money on things like billboards, park benches, sponsorships, radio, TV, etc.
Now you know the 3 most common reasons why an individual business professionals’ marketing and lead generation campaigns do not work in today’s economy. Keeping that in mind, here are 3 things you can do right now to begin to automatically increase your income and begin to build a steady and predictable high income business.
1) Pull out all current marketing pieces and check to make sure they contain offers and deadlines. If they do not, edit the marketing pieces and put these in.
2) Decide on what it is you would like the prospect to do when they receive your marketing or lead generation piece. Do you want them to call for more information, go to a website, fill out a form, etc. For each marketing or lead generation piece you use, guide the prospect to the next step. Create 5 or 6 steps and you will have the “follow up” I described in section “B” above.
3) Review all marketing and lead generation campaigns and see if they fall into the “advertising victim” category. If they do chances are they are not producing any real results and you may want to save your money and stop them.
Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daryl_Spector
