By Terri Levine
Every day I get asked questions on my blog, when speaking with clients, on webinars and teleseminars and at speaking events. For the past few months I’ve collected the top questions and today I am going to reveal the answers to those questions.
Question: How do I get people to buy my products/services?
Answer: You can have great products and services and even have a great market but if not enough people are buying you are in trouble. You must have a sales message that communicates a strong reason with a lot of benefits so that buyers persuade themselves to purchase from you.
This means you need to capture the interest of potential buyers and keep their interest long enough so that they can see the benefits of what you are offering. Your product or services needs to make their life or business better and when you tie a guarantee to your product/service as well as an incentive for investing right then, that is how a sale is made.
You can use this process with direct mail as well as the internet or by combining both methods, which is the method I personally prefer.
Question: Should I use a printed brochure?
Answer: You need to use your website as your online brochure yet I also like printed brochures because they do convey information about your business for people who like to hold something in their hands. Brochures are inexpensive to print and can be handed out and also mailed. Ads can be placed asking encouraging people to ask for more information and brochures can then be sent as follow up pieces.
Be sure brochures fit into business envelopes and don’t make them expensive. No need to spend a lot of money on color. They are inexpensive direct response pieces. If you have a facility or sales people be sure they get handed out.
Most important a brochure needs to have a tear off reply card or a toll free number to call with a very specific discounted offer right in the brochure. It is a sales tool so use it that way.
My favorite form of brochure is a DVD. If you have a facility this should be playing on a continuous loop in your waiting area. If you don’t have a location use it at trade shows or mail them to pre qualified customers then follow up with a phone call.
Question: How do I get free publicity?
Answer: You want to create relationships with local press in your field. If you are a business find the editors and writers of business publications for example. Connect with owners of newspapers, radio stations and magazines.
Every month send out a press release solving a problem that is being talked about in the news. Then call the publication and pitch your story in 30 seconds.
When you get something published in a paper or appear on radio or TV, let your current and former customers know.
Be sure to pitch the right department. If you are an career expert don’t pitch the sports department. Pitch the editor in the right department. Always have a headline that catches attention, too.
Free publicity might not bring you cash but it does give you name recognition and credibility. It works in conjunction with your paid advertising.
Question: Should I send out an Ezine?
Answer: It is so fast and easy to send out an ezine and also inexpensive that not taking advantage of this strategy is a big mistake. Publishing your own ezine (on line newsletter) is a great way to educate and inform prospects and customers and to also make special offers to them.
An ezine can be one to two pages and can be sent monthly. It’s a way of keeping in touch and sharing your expertise with prospects and customers as well as a way to have prospects sign up and become part of your database to receive your ezine.
Ezines are a great way to make you and your company an authority and nowadays can be done with desktop publishing and look great. Just be sure you use your newsletter to teach and educate first and foremost.
Question: What is your top tool for getting more clients?
Answer: By far my favorite marketing tool is information seminars. Whether you do these live or through teleclasses and webinars this is the best way to share your company’s expertise with potential clients. I recommend inviting current customers and their friends as well.
The agenda for the event is always the same. Start with information about the topic. Give a lot of information so that people clearly see you as the expert. Then offer specific advice sessions to those who are interested. The event has to be about your audience and how you can benefit them. Don’t sell outright at the event. Instead sort, sift and separate and have the people who are seriously interested set up private sessions to demo what you are selling.
There you go, the answers to the top questions I get! I hope you got benefit from hearing the questions that are raised and how I have answered them.
