Karen Purves

Small Business Networking: Are you making the most of it?

Posted on 12 April 2010 | 2 responses

In less than twenty years, networking has gone from something done informally to being a prime marketing tool for small business.

The opportunities are endless. You can network at any time of the day or night – face to face and online.

The big question is “Have your Social Networking skills and practices kept pace?”

What are the changes?

• Small Business Networking is now one to many and many to many than just one to one.
• Business Networking and your website are intrinsically linked
• Networking effectiveness is boosted by switching from sales oriented messages to content and permission-based marketing.

To make the most of these, here are five networking tips:

1. Online Social Networking Profiles
   Create or update your online profile for all the networking groups to which you belong. Be consistent with what you write and keep them up to date.
2. Join Social Networking Sites
   Choose the ones that best suit your business. The top social networking sites are Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Generally, Facebook is great if you have a large following already. Linkedin is a business oriented site. Twitter is good for both business to business and business to consumer providing your market is there too! There are smaller ones, industry specific or geographically based. Still choose the ones best for your business.

3. Create Content
   If you are already glazing over with idea of creating articles and content generally, come back!

   With online networking, posts are like attending an event where the emphasis is on sharing information.

   There’s a bonus for this activity, you can use this content in other areas of your marketing. What’s more, you can create lead magnets from these and the comments received!

4. Comment of what’s being said
   Monitor what others are saying and add your thoughts – just as you would in face to face networking. Remember, nothing is deleted on the internet, so keep your comments in line with your business aims and values.

   People buy from people they trust and the easiest way to build this is through consistency.

5. Have 121s
   It doesn’t matter whether you network face to face or online, you want ways to explore potential. A 121 over the phone is a quick and easy way to decide how to move forward even if that is to arrange an appointment.

These are five networking tips you can do today and over time they increase the effectiveness of your marketing. Tell me which of these are doing now?

Answers relating to Lead Magnets

Posted on 22 March 2010 | 1 response

These  questions were asked in a recent seminar. If you want to have your questions answered, please leave a comment below

Anne:    How do the Lead Magnet get sales?

KP:       You have a follow through service with links.  So your magnet isn’t a stand alone.  It’s part of your whole programme, it’s embedded.  So whatever you want to do, your follow on services flow your lead magnet.

Anne:    In other words don’t just pop it up there and hope for the best, it’s got to be part of the package?

KP:       That’s right.  Marketing only works when it’s integrated.  When one bit works with another bit.. which works with another bit.  Marketing doesn’t work very effectively if you do one bit and you do that really well but it doesn’t go anywhere.

You might be lucky and get sales from it but that’s where it’s hard for small business owners who aren’t trained in marketing to actually realise that it’s a concept.  Think of marketing as an orchestra and every instrument, every tool has a part to play in growing your business.

Mike:    What is the relationship, if any, between what they call squeeze pages, landing pages and a lead magnet?

KP:       A lead magnet isn’t necessarily on a squeeze page.  A squeeze page is where someone lands on a page and they can’t do anything else.  The lead magnet seminar page that you arrived on was a squeeze page because there was nowhere else you could go apart from decide whether to sign up or press the “back” key on your browser.  They were the only two pages where you could have gone.  That’s forcing you to make a decision.

If you go to the the Twitter Report page on my case study, where it’s got all of the recommendations and the graphic and stuff, that’s basically another squeeze page.

I’ve also got the Twitter report lead magnet on HaveMoreClients home page which is nothing like a squeeze page.  People don’t have to sign up to it, but people do.  It depends where the lead magnet fits within all the other bits of your marketing and what is it that you want it to do.  All these things have their place.

Mike:    Thank you.

Post your questions and receive answers on how to use Lead Magnets to attract more clients.

Make Lead Magnets Work in Four Easy Steps?

Posted on 19 March 2010 | 1 response

Many businesses think that marketing is somehow manipulative and unpleasant. And, this perception is so far from reality. For Lead Magnets to work understanding the fundamentals of marketing is essential. And, what’s so great is, once you have these – your marketing will be so much better each time you follow the steps.

Step one:  Learn what your market wants and how they want to receive it

So who is your market? Be specific! The more specific, the more personal you appear. You want people to think/feel “That’s me!” Creating that understanding goes a long way in the “Know, Like and Trust” of relationships

By creating a profile of your ideal client group, commonalities arise and that makes it easier for you to communicate to the whole group.

Be wary of creating multiple groups as this will increase your marketing effort. Each group requires a specific message for them to feel/think “That’s me!”

On the flip side, you can provide information in different formats and topics to suit sub-groups.

Some of us are auditory, some of us are kinaesthetic, others’ are visionary.  What happens is that when we provide everything through text we limit our marketability.

The easiest way of finding what your market wants is to ask them. You can do this by interviewing them on the phone, face to face or in small groups depending upon your skills, time and resources. Interviews are great when you want to learn the language your market uses as well as more about them. If you have the evidence regarding language, then a questionnaire can be the quickest and easiest way.

And if you really don’t want to contact the market first hand, you can look at what’s been published on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores. By seeing the numbers of books, the words and topics addressed gives you a good indication what’s been done and is popular.

Step Two:  Create the content to suit your market

The basic formats for Lead Magnets are Text, Audio, Video and the combinations.

The most common statement from small business owner clients is “But, I don’t have content. I don’t have enough to say” And, that is usually after they have spoken passionately about their business for thirty minutes.

It doesn’t matter weather you have a product based business or offer services. You have content.

Every business owner is an expert in their area. If not, then they won’t have a business that will last that long!

By concentrating on the themes arising from Step One, you have topics from which to add your perspective and stamp. This is important in the Know, Like and Trust cycle. If you appear to be little more than saying the “same ole”, there will be little to distinguish you from others. This is your opportunity to demonstrate your thought leadership, your perspective. By doing this, you increase your attractiveness and likeability to the market.

Step Three: Add the Lead Magnet to your webpage

This can be to the homepage of your site, your blog, or even create a mini-site that just has your lead magnet. Well, it could be on all – the essential ingredient is to have an email capture mechanism.

People have asked if Lead Magnets only work online. The answer is no – you can hand deliver the lead magnet. But to increase the effectiveness of your marketing, it is much better to have Lead Magnets online so people can get the material when it suits them.

All your offline promotion can direct people to your website/page with your lead magnet.

Too many websites are little more than brochures, they cost money to create and maintain but don’t actually work for your business. Lead Magnets helps you to redress the balance and start to turn your website into a profit centre rather than a drain on resources.

Step Four – Promote your Magnet

What if you just add it to your existing marketing?

Instantly you are open 24/7, 365 days a year.

You are no longer open 9-5 five days a week.

People can consume you whenever they want and what’s so great about this is that you know they are interested in what you have written about or what you recorded because they have downloaded it.

Then it is up to you to build that relationship up over time.

The big emphasis about adding a lead magnet to your marketing mix is that you know what they are interested in, you build up a relationship so that they know they like and trust you.  Once they trust you, they will open their wallet.

Just think about how you buy.  Do you buy from people who you don’t know?  You might if it’s a low cost, low risk transactional purchase. Great, if you are in this market?  But with selling services that can be quite expensive, we need know how we can build that relationship so people trust and are happy to part with their money.

Here are ten ways to promote your Lead Magnet

1. Business cards

   You could have your url on your business card pointing to your lead magnet.  That’s important.  How many business cards do you give away in a week?  What are people going to do?  The first thing they are going to do if they do anything from your business card is look at your website.

2. Articles

   Whether you’ve got online or offline articles or whether you post articles in special groups or directories you have an opportunity to put a link to your lead magnet.

3. Your blog post

   You could put a call to action at the bottom of your blog post that points to your lead magnet.

4. Networking

   Every time you go networking you can tell people that you have a lead magnet, something on your website that you can download.  Not only that but it makes it easier for your vendors and suppliers to be networking for you.  They’re not recommending you as a sale, they can say “Oh, I know Samantha, she does that sort of work and I know she’s got an e-book you can download/a video you can watch”.  That’s going to be worth a lot.  It’s going to have more traffic coming to your lead magnet.

5. Google Ad Words

   These are great but I don’t recommend you do it at the beginning, it’s a more advanced activity.  Do Google Ad Words when you’ve proven that your lead magnet is magnetic otherwise you’ll be spending money and not getting a return.

6. Press releases

   You can do online press releases as well as those to go into magazines and papers of your choice that are read by your market.

7. Public speaking

   You can structure your talk so people can get more information by downloading  your information.

8. You can give testimonials

   People talk about testimonials as getting them from people.  Actually giving testimonials is a great promotional tool.  It means you are seen by people who are not in your usual circle.

   You are able to show people the sort of business you are in the way to give testimonials. Also, you build up links form other sites with testimonials.

   If you give testimonials and you give freely, it will actually increase your promotions, particularly if you then put your web address linking back to the lead magnet.

9. Social networking

   Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and all the other sites that you could be using that reaches your market. Each of these can be regarded as a distinct tool as they appeal to different groups of people and the way you present the material matters to each platform.

10. Inserts in magazines and newsletters

    That’s a bit like Google Ad Words, it will cost money and you want to make sure that your magnet is magnetic before you do that.

You don’t have to spend lots of money to market your business.  You do have to spend money on learning how to do it but not to deliver it.  If you’re spending lots of money, I suggest that you look at different ways of marketing your business.

Now you have the four steps. These are the same steps I use in my own business and with clients. If you would like to learn how to do, go to Lead Magnet Secrets. Training starts on 24th March 2010

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