The year is nearly half over. Have you met half of your sales and revenue goals? If not, what are you going to do in the 3rd quarter to get things back on track?
The answer is to execute very tightly focused marketing tactics. There is a whole universe out there of potential prospects, products/services you could offer to those buyers and avenues you could use to reach them. It can be overwhelming. It can also entice you into doing a little bit of everything without having much impact.
If you could only concentrate your efforts in one direction in Q3, where would your low-hanging fruit be?
- Is it in an industry you have started getting new customers from or in opportunities to up-sell existing clients?
- If you want to aim at a new target, where have you identified some serious pain that you already have the expertise to address?
- Can you identify a niche that has low competition or where you have a distinct advantage over competitors that buyers would put a high value on?
- Are you in a position to make a truly compelling offer with one of your products or services, rather than just communicating a “me-too” message?
- Can you leverage some of your existing relationships with clients in the industry or the vendors/consultants who serve them to have more impact through testimonials and referrals?
Once you pick a specific objective, it gets a lot easier to think about the focused marketing tactics required to land those purchasers. Even so, you still have to be careful not to run in too many directions with grandiose plans that suck up lots of time and money. There are three reasons why:
- What if you are wrong?
- What if the niche you pick turns out to have less potential than you thought it did?
- What if you throw a party and no one comes?
Think about how you could test your idea quickly and inexpensively. There may be 10,000 consumers in your target industry but I bet if you did a little research, maybe only 20% really fit your ideal client profile (2,000). Out of those 2,000 think about pulling a 10% sample of 200. Instead of trying to reach 10,000 prospects with one touch, how could you reach 200 in multiple ways to compound the effect? For example, a drip e-mail campaign, mail piece, article in a trade magazine, post on a blog site and a phone call.
You can even test different messages and offers. Don’t forget to create a sense of urgency and include a specific call to action like “Call Now.” Make sure you have mechanisms in place to handle your telephone traffic and are able to respond if it comes from different time zones. It is also important to accurately track which offers callers are taking action on, have a lead qualifying process in place and create a system for scheduling phone or in-person appointments with salespeople.
Not every idea you try will be a home run. You want to design a process that allows you to fail quickly and cheaply so you still have the time and resources left to promptly move on to idea number two. When you do hit the jackpot, testing allows you to get the message, the offer and your procedures right before you commit to scaling up your idea and handling large numbers of responses.
What idea could you test in Q3 to hit a home run?
This blog was written by Laurie Leonard, the President of SUITE 1000, a U.S. based national telephone answering service, inbound call center and outsourced call center service. Her company has specialized in handling legal intake, sales leads, email lead response, appointment scheduling, customer service and help desk calls for over 20 years.
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