Partner Article

Business Guide: The 10 best low-cost marketing strategies

If you want to attract, convert and keep a steady stream of customers, use the following low-cost marketing strategies, recommends client attraction Expert Ford Henderson.

1. Choose A Niche

One of the easiest ways to attract customers is to decide which group of prospective customers you will get your very best results for and go after them.

If you want to save yourself a fortune in marketing costs and make huge profits, don’t try to sell your services to everyone ? choose a niche market that wants and can afford your service.

A mistake that many business owners make is to try to sell to everyone rather than a very focused and select market. I’ve been involved in marketing and sales for the past 30 years and I’ve seen countless businesses fail because of this one catastrophic mistake ? they believe ‘everyone’ is interested in their service so they buy a huge ad in a consumer magazine or send out expensive glossy brochures to all the businesses in their area and get no responses. My advice is: get specific and target a small yet lucrative and interested market. Aim to be the big fish in a small pond.

Once you’ve chosen your target market, find out everything you can about the people in it ? what do they want and expect from a service provider? What do they listen to and read? What are their challenges and their aspirations? What triggers them to buy? What does and doesn’t work?

Don’t make the mistake of believing that potential buyers only want solutions to problems ? they may not consider they have a challenge and in fact, want to improve a situation.

2. Position yourself as the expert

Aim to become the leading expert in your niche. Why? People trust experts and actively seek them out for help and advice. Experts are contacted by the media for their comments and views and prospective customers call them to make appointments. To become the expert in your market, raise your profile by getting published or interviewed. Discover what publications people in your target market read and respond to. Find out what gets published and then write an article or hire a freelance writer to do it for you. Don’t immediately take the advertising route ? instead think of ways you can generate free publicity for your company.

Become recognised as the prime source of useful information. Provide free information products, write articles and white papers about the problems your prospective clients face and how they can solve them as well as how they can achieve their goals. Conduct workshops, seminars and teleclasses that help your prospective customers.

3. Use Soft Not Hard Sell Tactics

If you want to bring in more clients, forget about ‘hard sell’ and instead focus on building a relationship. You’ll save yourself a lot of money. It’s a mistake to hit prospective clients with a sales message ? people hate being sold to and they switch off when something seems like an advert. If you try to sell to prospective customers the moment you make contact, you’re going to repel them.

You need to demonstrate that you are more interested in helping them than selling to them. Send them information they’ll be interested in. Aim to provide value before as well as after the sale.

Send people articles or links to websites that you know they’ll find useful. This shows them that you’re interested in helping them rather than just clinching another deal.

4. Establish Credibility

Promoting a service can be a little more challenging than promoting a product. While prospective customers can see, touch or even taste products before they make the decision to buy, they can’t see or touch a service. It becomes a risk and people don’t like to take risks.

Prospective clients need to be persuaded that you are trustworthy and that the service will deliver what it promises and solve their problem or create the opportunity they seek. People are more likely to ‘take the plunge’ when they know, like and trust the service provider. Offer them opportunities to sample your service before they make a financial commitment. Offer them a free mini-consultation, a free taster session, a free place on your workshop or seminar, a free special report or a free subscription to your newsletter.

Use testimonials from satisfied clients to help persuade prospective clients that using your service is a worthwhile investment. Testimonials provide social proof and are therefore very persuasive.

5. Make It Personal

It’s crucial to make the first contact with a prospective client seem like a personal one. Whether you make that contact by phone, in person at a networking event, or by mail or email, the person receiving it must feel like you are addressing them directly and that you understand what they want.

Once you’ve made that initial contact then you can follow-up with direct mail letters or a printed newsletter or ezine crammed with content they’ll find helpful and interesting. Newsletters are a great way of showing your expertise and keeping in regular contact with your prospective clients.

6. Build Your Network

Networking is more than attending specific events ? you can network by phone and online as well as in person. While some of the people you meet may be prospective clients, others could be valuable sources of referrals. Develop ongoing relationships with complementary professionals and build your referral team. These are other professionals who sell non-competing services or products to the same niche customers you are targeting. You can also build your online network by taking part in discussions on relevant blogs, message boards, and social networking sites. Maintain contact with former employers and past clients ? they could prove to be excellent sources of referrals for you. Be bold and ask them for referrals.

7. Start Public Speaking

Raise your profile by speaking in public at networking events. This is a great way to enhance your reputation and to gain practice for when you hold seminars or workshops of your own.

8. Write A Blog, Articles, Press Releases And Special Reports

Another way of building credibility and getting more exposure is to write about your area of expertise and use the material in your own blog, on your website, in articles and in special reports. You can also promote your business through press releases and send them to relevant publications offline and online.

9. Track Prospective Clients

Establish a system to keep track of all of the people who are interested in your product or services, and find ways to keep in regular contact with them. By keeping track of all of the people who’ve showed an interest in your business, you’ll turn more of them into paying customers.

10. Ask Existing Customers For Help

Your satisfied customers can help you sell your services by providing you with referrals (you do have to ask for them) and testimonials. Use your testimonials in all of your marketing material.

If you want to put an end to the ‘feast or famine’ cycle that many service professionals experience and instead enjoy a constant stream of new clients, start using these techniques today.

Ford Henderson’s consultancy, based in North Shields, helps professional service providers win more clients. Contact him at ford@fordhendersonmarketing.com to arrange a one-to-one or group coaching and training session or visit www.fordhendersonmarketing.com.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .