Build your list folks

Marketing is changing, folks...rapidly. The old school systems of generating opportunities are no longer effective. For car dealers, all they needed to do was run a full page color ad in the Sunday newspaper and people came out in droves. Home improvements guys...same thing. In fact, they'd have to hire 7 to 10 people to work the phones on Sunday evening, to handle the call volume that came in from their ads in the local newspaper.

Today, these ads don't work. Well, they don't work to the level they once did. People are hit with hundreds of thousands of marketing messages on a daily basis. We've inundated with it, so much we've grown numb. When we see a full page color ad from Johnny's Used Cars or XYZ Siding and Windows offering "The Best Selection and the Lowest Prices", our brains tell us..."yeah right". The general public sees right through that. Hell, we've seen that same stupid catch phrase for fourty years. "Best Selection/Lowest Prices". "OK hun, today's the day, I think THIS car lot IS offering the best selection and the lowest prices". It's cheesy. It's gimmicky...and everybody sees through it.

The beautiful thing is that marketing can be much less expensive today than it used to be. Those ads in the paper can cost $3,000 to $20,000 depending on the publication. We can now market our businesses on the internet for almost free, if we do it the right way.

I suggest everyone who's in business or wants to be build and cultivate a list. The best is a list of folks who've already bought from you. That person, the one who has raised their hands and said "I trust you enough to spend my hard-earned money on you and your product/service", is the most valuable person in the world to a good business. But, today most of us say "thank you", and move on to the next. We focus all of our time and resources on getting new customers. New customers are wonderful, don't misunderstand. We love new customers. But, the cost of acquiring a new customer is ten times higher than selling to somebody you've already done business with. Fact.

The answer is to give these folks who've bought a ton of love. Anybody who's bought from you in the past is priority number one. Get their email address and file it. Get every piece of information they'll give you and keep it. Add every person you've bid a job for or gave a price to. Get their email address and add it to your list. These folks are the people you need to stay in contact with.

Once you've built a list, no matter how big or small, use one of the email management groups to stay in constant contact with your list. Constantcontact.com These companies will send out, automatically, the messages or content you create. They'll manage a list of up to 1,000,000 email addresses. This is a turn-key system of staying in touch with people who can or have bought from you. Gold.

I suggest you go beyond staying in touch. I say you do everything you can to help these people, truly help them. Do research, do your homework. Become an absolute expert in your chosen field, and offer them real solutions to the problems they have. Don't just offer them products for sale, either. Give them items of value..for free. If you consistently provide value to these folks, weekly or monthly, asking nothing in return, you become credible and they trust you. Then, down the line, when you ask them to buy your product..whatever that is, they see you as something more than just a guy asking them to buy a product.

Be cool in how you communicate with them. People today hate to be sold. Cheese ball salesy language will make your list run for the hills. I would to, if some dude was trying to throw some BS at me. Take a different approach...Imagine you're talking face to face with one of your previous customers who's become a buddy of yours. When you see him after a year or so of doing biz with him, you would never come up and say something like this..."Well Hello Mr Travis, It was great doing business with you. I've been remiss in not staying in communication with you" blah blah blah. No, you'd probably say "hey Tom, how've you been man? I tell ya, I've been a bad friend. I've been out chasing and spending a bunch of money trying to find new customers, and forgot the folks who've helped me over the years. I should have been reaching out a hand to you all, instead of running all over town, trying to tell my story to whoever will listen." The same way you'd talk to a buddy. When that guy hears you speak in a cool, informal way, he instantly drops his guard and goes into relaxed, buddy mode. Dude speak instead of awkward business language. This is the way to shape and craft your content and messages to your list. They'll listen, number one, and they'll love the fact somebody is just wanting to talk instead of pitch a deal to them.

For example...A Used Car Dealer

He has a list of 5,000 previous customers and/or people they offered deals to for a used car. This owner or his sales group, should hire one of the email mgmt companies to manage this list. Then, he sends out a request to all of the people on the list, asking for permission to include them on a list for a monthly newsletter.

This newsletter is a free thing that contains free advice on proper care and maintenance of a vehicle. "Mr Jones, thanks a ton for trusting us last time you came in and bought that vehicle from us. As a thank you, I'm sending you this newsletter to keep in touch and to offer some free advice on how to do a few simple things to hopefully avoid costly repairs down the road. In trying economic times, the worst thing would be to have to dump a few thousand into a new transmission, especially if it could have been avoided". You could also highlight some cool features coming out in some of the newer models.

Your content is up to you. I'm a believer in going out and finding out what people are really worried about when it comes to vehicle maintenance, buying a vehicle, selling a vehicle, etc. When you learn what really keeps these folks up at night, you can impact them in a major way. Solving big problems for people usually ends up with significant compensation on our end.

But, you have to be genuine in wanting to truly help these people. If you're only in this to sell somebody something, they'll sniff you out in a heartbeat. People can smell a salesy rat a mile away. Give them real content, for free. Then, when you have something to sell, you have credibility.

Those of us who do these "in the trenches" sort of value-added work for our customers, are the ones who are going to prosper when times get tough instead of go out of business. This is a low-cost system of generating not only leads, but a truly loyal list of people who will buy from us for decades, if we treat them right.

If your business is new and you have no previous customers or prospects, I suggest you blog. If you blog consistently for 90 days, you'll start to show up on the search engines. Blogging does a couple of key things. It makes you go out and learn about your business, so that you have content to post. Second, it positions you as an expert. Big.

Also, you can use the social networking sites to build your list...Facebook, Twitter, etc.

This takes serious effort and commitment, but the payoff is huge.

Flip the Switch