How are you nurturing your prospects?

The most valuable thing you have in your business is your potential and existing customer list.  These are the people who’ve already done business with you and those that have raised their hand indicating that they want to find out more about you and your business.  I find it interesting that it’s extremely common for me to find businesses that don’t seem to really value their list.  Many don’t actually keep track of it, and those that do keep the list updated, frequently don’t really do anything with it.

How are you nurturing your prospects?

Business owners often tell me that their biggest challenge in their business is getting new leads.  Then I ask them what they did with the leads they generated last month.  The typical response is “I followed up, we met, but they’re not ready to buy.”  That probably describes 90% of your encounters with a prospect — only about 10% ever buy during that initial meeting.  That doesn’t, however, mean that the remaining 90% will never buy, it just means that they aren’t ready right now.  There’s an open door to nurture that relationship, to continue to touch base and provide information that educates and adds value.  And that’s where most businesses fail.  They fail to keep in touch.

Your list of prospects and your existing customers are the most valuable thing in your business.  We all know the cost to generate new leads far exceeds the cost of nurturing someone who already knows you.  Sources indicate it costs 5 to 10 times as much to generate new leads.

There are several ways a business can keep itself top of mind to keep the door open for future business.  Plan how and when you will keep in touch with prospects and existing customers.  This is really about building a follow-up process and that will require a multi-pronged approach to ensure that authenticity is maintained.

The following is a list of options you can use to create a follow-up system or process within your business to ensure that you never get forgotten.

• Monthly electronic newsletter
• Telephone call
• Hand-written note cards
• Invitation to a Networking Event
• Video message
• Sending an article of interest
• Direct Mail
• Invitations to a Speaking Event
• Social Network Connections
• Special Offers

Can you think of some other items that should be part of your follow-up system?

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While many people say the days of email marketing have passed, this is simply not the case.  Businesses may find the results are unpredictable simply because their email practices are unpredictable.  Like marketing in general, effective email marketing requires a level of consistency and setting the expectations to predict when a prospect will receive another message from you is one of the critical keys to success.  Here are 5 simple tips to make your email marketing more effective.

Email marketing is still an effective means of marketing.

1. Use permission-based email practices.  Don’t waste your time trying to sell to those that aren’t interested.  If you’ve got their permission, they’re less likely to send you to the SPAM folder and more likely to actually respond to your communications.

2. Be consistent with your emails.  If you only communicate with your audience when you have something new to sell, they’re not likely to be all that receptive to your message.  If you’re doing a newsletter, do it monthly and tell your audience when to expect the newsletter i.e. the 15^th of every month.  If you have a bi-weekly note with tips, make sure you send out it out bi-weekly and that it comes out the same day and time each time.

3. Avoid the urge to communicate too frequently.  This is more likely to turn people off and have a negative effect.  I suggest no more than bi-weekly for most small businesses.

4. Track and monitor.  Monitoring your effectiveness can only help you to produce better results in the long run.  Most email services have great monitoring tools now, but you have to look at the numbers and act based on those numbers.  And don’t be afraid to test.  Run A/B tests to see which headline or offer might be more effective.

5. Be persistent.  We all know that people research their purchases very differently and everybody reaches the buying point at different points in time. Continue to engage with them and keep yourself top of mind with industry news, tips and tricks, coupons, special events.  If you do that, when they are ready to buy, you’ll likely be the seller.

The objective of all of your marketing efforts is to build a relationship with your prospects.  With each of your marketing practices, ask yourself if what you’re doing is helping to build trust.  Your list is your goldmine, so mine it wisely.

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