Your Customers Are Looking For You Online...
Can They Find YOU?

Michael Bennitt
Editor
October 2014
Volume 4, Issue 10

IM Social Now Newsletter
Is Your Prospect Pipeline Full?


 

Small and mid-sized businesses often fall for one common temptation - and it leads to all sorts of trouble. It is this: Once you have 'enough' customers in your sales funnel, you stop marketing and turn your attention to whatever other emergency is currently screaming at you. Truth be told, some even make that shift when the sales funnel is nowhere near full.

 

It's understandable, especially if you bear responsibility for a long list of tasks that need doing. You can't spend all of your time marketing, to the exclusion of customer service, sales, management, paperwork, and everything else piled on your plate.

 

There must be an upper limit, a line in the sand that demarcates a point named "Enough" - and there is. However, that line in the sand is twice as far as most business owners and marketing heads think it is.

 

Think of marketing as if you were fishing, so this becomes clear. Let's say you need ten fish to make your numbers.

  • Got a nibble? Great - but it's not a catch (yet). Don't stop fishing.

  • Got ten fish on ice? Great, but you shouldn't stop fishing quite yet.

  • Got twenty fish on ice? Now you can stop.

Smart marketers market until they have twice as many deals in the bag as what they need. Why?

 

Here are three great reasons to double your marketing efforts:

  1. Full Funnels Give Freedom
     
    The more you fill your pipeline, the more choices you have. If you have a service-based business, having an excess of interested prospects gives you the freedom to turn down clients and projects that aren't ideally suited for your services. You won't feel compelled to take on less than ideal clients, because you will know you don't have to.                                                    
  2. More Irons in the Fire Smokes Stress

When you have a lot riding on every prospect, because there are so few of them, you're likely to experience more stress. When you have more prospects in your funnel, landing any one particular prospect becomes less critical. Say goodbye to tossing and turning, worrying about whether you'll land that one client who seemed interested at first and is now unresponsive.

  1. The More Prospects, the More You Can Charge

The natural result of effective marketing is that you'll have more paying clients coming into your business. Supply and demand dictates that a full prospect funnel will lead to having more paying customers. More customers leads to higher prices. When you are in high demand, you make more money.

 

You simply can't crimp your prospect pipeline and expect to get the same results you'd get by marketing full-out. But if you'll aim for a goal that's twice as big as you've gone after before, you will reap the wonderful rewards that come with a full prospect funnel.

 

 

 

 

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We work with business owners (like you) to grow and increase their profits by doing their online marketing for them.

Our specialty is making sure future customers can find you online and choose you over your competitors, even if they don't know your name - with Social Media, Search Engines and Mobile Phone devices

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Is Anyone Reading Your Messages?     

 

Social media and content marketing success, in part, rests on knowing how much content to deliver, where. See, different platforms work best with different lengths.

Here's what the pros recommend:

  • Twitter: 100 characters

  • Facebook: 40 characters

  • Email subject lines: 30 characters

  • Blog posts: No more than seven minutes to read

  • Webinars: 18 minutes, plus time for Q&A

All of these character counts include spaces and punctuation. These length guidelines will help ensure your message isn't truncated, and that prospects can read it easily, even on mobile devices.

 

 

 

How Do You Relate?   


Did you realize that right now, for the first time in recorded business history, we have four generations in the workplace at the same time?

 

Veterans, Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials may work side by side, but in many ways it's like they're all coming from different planets.

 

Veterans viewed work as an obligation. "It's work... that's why they pay you to do it." In leadership positions, they are direct, formal, and motivated by respect. Work and personal life are separated by an uncrossable chasm.

 

Boomers grew up seeing their parents work for a single employer until retirement. For many of them, the prospect of staying in one business for the duration seemed intolerable. Work, for them, was nothing if not an exciting adventure. They are largely motivated by money and recognition. There is a higher incidence of workaholism among Boomers.

 

Gen X seems to crave structure, yet also be self-reliant and skeptical. As leaders, they are egalitarian. As followers, they ask "why" a lot. They simultaneously crave positive feedback and freedom, working to live more than living to work.

 

Millennials are flummoxed by the idea of working for one company for an extended period of time. They view work as a means to an end - financing a lifestyle they enjoy. They want immediate feedback, meaningful work, and a sense of connection and community.

 

Whether you are managing a multi-generational team, or serving customers from all four generations, it helps to know what's most important to each.

 

 

 

 

 


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