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If your client base isn’t growing, you can’t be happy and furthermore you’ll find it harder and harder pay the bills. Your support structure should allow you bring on more new clients and less new employees, if you’ve set up your assembly line properly. If you haven’t, that’s a problem that will require much more time to cover. But
March 20, 2008
4 Min Read
By Maurice Saluan 1
If your client base isn’t growing, you can’t be happy and furthermore you’ll find it harder and harder pay the bills. Your support structure should allow you bring on more new clients and less new employees, if you’ve set up your assembly line properly. If you haven’t, that’s a problem that will require much more time to cover.
But here’s some guidance—seven tips for marketing and nine tips for lead generation—that can help.
Marketing is not a one-step process in which a single tactic yields a specific financial result.
Important Points:
In order to survive and thrive, you MUST do some marketing-so budget for it.
Make sure your messaging speaks to clients needs.
Marketing definitely has a significant, measurable impact on the growth of a business.
There are some tried and true methods to demand generation.
Taking a “vertical” approach increases your chances of success.
Repetition matters! The average partner must contact a prospect 5 times before getting an initial expression of interest.. .
Multiple touch points result in even greater success.
Not all marketing tactics are equally effective – and some marketing tactics may be more effective at specific stages in the marketing cycle. The different vehicles you have are email, direct mail, print advertising, web advertising, telemarketing, and television ads.
Vertical marketing will help your company be perceived as the right solution that your prospects need. The result will be a competitive advantage and more sales. Imagine that you have a business problem and are evaluating companies to help you solve it. You can choose a generalist that claims to do everything for every scenario or an expert that focuses on solving exactly the kind of problem you have, for companies just like yours, with a track record of success. I’ll bet you pick the expert, which demonstrates the advantage of vertical marketing.
Use the following steps to generate some leads:
Make sure you have marketing collateral that speaks to the verticals that you want to approach. Our Partners have had great success with Healthcare, Legal, Financial Services, Manufacturing and Distributors.
Make sure your website speaks to the verticals you select.
Compile a list of companies in your area that you can target (InfoUSA, Zap Data, Harris Infosource). Costs can run anywhere from 12 cents to 55 cents a record. Use SIC Code, zip code and company size in compiling your list.
Come up with a catchy, oversized 8×5 glossy postcard that has a well crafted message that will catch the eye of the recipient. E.g. “Business Continuity for as little as $199 per month.” Have a limited time offer, a URL to pick up a white paper, your web link, or anything else you can think of on the card. Use a promotional code so inbound calls can be tracked to this campaign.
Before any mailing, call and validate the list of 500 or 1000 target companies. Usually 500 is a good number to start with. Confirm contact info and have some questions ready that will point you in the right direction.
Send out the postcard to the clean list. I found Net Post (http://www.premiumpostcard.com/) to be easy and affordable to work with. Cost is approximately $1.10 for a printing, database merge and mailing for an over-sized postcard and it’s normally done in a day.
Follow up with a monthly call, referring to the limited time offer to see if you can schedule a meeting, conference call or webinar.
Keep updating your list as you go and at the end of one quarter you should have 15-20 companies that drop into the sales cycle.
Repeat the program quarterly for greater success and so on..
Repetition breeds success. The missing component in many of these programs is the telemarketing effort. This is crucial and if you don’t have the manpower to do this don’t waste the mailers. It won’t work. Also, liberally season all your marketing and sales materials with testimonial quotes from happy clients in the specific verticals your prospects are in.
We at Zenith Infotech provide turnkey programs such as the one above to help our Partners grow their business.
Note: Maurice Saluan is VP-Channel Management for Zenith Infotech as well as seasoned sales veteran in the managed service arena. Guest blog entries such as this one are contributed on a monthly basis as part of MSPmentor.net’s Platinum sponsorship.
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