The local marketing plan

[Business Brian]

Got this from a webhosting site, but I'm happy to leave the original company name involved - it's a great resource and case study for a local marketing plan:

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The following are some thoughts to help you gain new business. These are thoughts that we have been putting into action at Dynamic Net, Inc.:

1. Asking existing customers for referrals.

2. Executing a direct, regular, mail marketing campaign.

NOTE: Credit of #2 goes to Aussie Bob!!

3. Cold calling.

4. Presenting at local business clubs.

Asking existing customers for referrals
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One of the most forgotten, yet most fruitful methods of gaining new business is asking existing customers to provide you with one or more referrals.

If you are doing your best, you should have happy, satisfied customers, correct?

So why not ask your happy, satisfied customers who do they know who could use your services?

Before you do so, you may want to think about whether you want to provide your customer something in exchange for a referral.

That could be something as simple as a period of time of free hosting or a number of Web design maintenance changes or something else of value to your existing customer.

How often should you ask for referrals?

When I would have the time to go to sales training (in some years, weekly), the trainer would ask for a referral every time.

Over time you will gain a comfort zone of how often to ask customer x for a referral. But, if you never ask for one, then the answer is probably no.

Executing a direct, regular, mail marketing campaign
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One of the methods we have on our list to try that has been of great success for one of our overseas colleagues was a direct letter writing campaign.

Here is how they described their plan:

If I was to chase the market of local businesses, I would build a database from the Yellow Pages, of businesses that could benefit from a website. If you don't built sites, partner this with a local web developer.

The plan -

Then commence a 4 week marketing campaign to 100 of those businesses each week, by direct mail. You pick 100 businesses and you're going to target them for 1 month with a targeted campaign.

Week 1 -

The first letter introduces your services and how they benefit the client. Short and sweet. Nothing too detailed. This is just an intro and you're not expecting any response from this letter.

Week 2 -

The next week another letter goes out to those 100 businesses, and gives some more information about the benefits that these businesses will receive, with a web presence. Again, nothing too detailed, and don't expect any kind of response. If you get some businesses contacting you at this point, then great, that's a bonus.

Week 3 -

The next week another letter goes out to those same 100 businesses with even more information about what you can do for them. Now you have sent 2 previous letters and hopefully, most of those businesses know you exist and maybe a good % of them have read your previous letters. Push a little for a meeting in this letter and expect some kind of response.

Week 4 - Monday

You send the final sales letter to those 100 pre-selected businesses from your database. The object here is to get to a face to face meeting with someone who makes the decision, as to whether or not they go online etc.

Week 4 - Thursday -

Start to call each of these 100 businesses and see if you can make an appointment with them, to discuss this further. Don't try to close the sale on the phone. You need to be sitting down with the decision maker/s, and you then take it from there.

The above is just a quick guide and it will work [tons of work in coming up with each sales letter], if you apply yourself and take ACTION!! Good luck.


Cold Calling
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While it is often the most dreaded tools for developing new business, cold calling continues to be a foundation for developing new business.

One of our board members, Barbara Boland, built an extremely successful management training consulting business by using the Yellow pages, and making cold calls.

She would make between 25 to 50 cold calls per day with a goal of one-to-two in-person visits per day; once she got half way through the phone book, she had her business built up to the point where she didn't have to make cold calls again. Her primary method of gaining new business today is referrals from existing customers.

Most people who try cold calling will learn quickly that approximately 96% of those called will say, "no thank you." And sometimes people will give up early because they look at the results as being black and white -- I only got 1 appointment out of every 25 calls.

Yet, each call provides you with value for the following reasons:

Every person to whom you talk, now knows your business exists and the services you provide.

You have an opportunity with every call to find out who are your competitors in the area you called; and, potentially their strengths and weaknesses.

You get lots of practice ingraining in your heart, why you!
You should use a script as a basis of your cold call, and in your script you want to cover three areas:

Your name, and what business are you in.
What problems do you solve.
In layman's terms, how do you solve them.

Presenting at local business clubs
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Most communities have a number of business clubs. In Berks County, there are several Rotary clubs, at least one Toastmaster's club, at least one Lion's Club, an accounting club, and a techie club.

Most business clubs are hungry for business professionals to come and speak to their club members. They want you to speak to their club members!

Almost all have the catch that you cannot do a "sales presentation;" however, if you do your presentation carefully, you will be presenting to every club member why you are the most credible person / company in the world to handle certain situations.

When Jake Winemiller, John Robinson, and myself gave an anti-SPAM presentation for the local Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP), we got several inquires from business owners who were sick to death of SPAM in their mail boxes, and employees threatening law suits due to sexual harassment.

You can find local business clubs in the Yellow pages as well as by calling your local chamber of commerce.

 

[Suzanne]

I hate cold calling but I better add that if you're going to do it you should know the exact name of the person you need to talk to. If you don't ask for a name you'll get easily blocked by the secertary. If you know the name and you get blocked they'll usually ring back just to find out who the hell you are, and if you're important. You take the if and make it work for them to catch your client.

[Business Brian]

I hate cold calling but I better add that if you're going to do it you should know the exact name of the person you need to talk to. If you don't ask for a name you'll get easily blocked by the secertary. If you know the name and you get blocked they'll usually ring back just to find out who the hell you are, and if you're important. You take the if and make it work for them to catch your client.

A good point - I'm going to make a note of that for if I ever need to do any cold-calling.