17 Simple, Easy And Cheap Ways To Get Tons More Leads
If you send out marketing materials, I presume you hope people will get in touch with you or buy something. There’s nothing more stomach churning in this business than a campaign that fails.
Here are some simple and easy ways to improve response from your audience.
1.) Let’s say you send out emails to your list. Don’t sign as ‘The Acme Team’, use one person’s name, Jim Johnson, Acme Inc. People like hearing from and talking with other people. If they do want to get in touch, who are they more likely to email, ‘Dear Acme Team’ Or ‘Dear Jim’?
2.) Personalize your salutations whenever possible. Dear John, not Dear Colleague or Dear Friend or Dear Business Associate. It takes more work but is an instant attention grabber than lets people know this is just for them and no one else.
3.) When appropriate, use plain text, don’t over design things. It is not a good idea for people to know they are about to be sold, it gets their guard up and overly designed marketing material is a sure giveaway that selling is about to commence. That is why newspaper ads that look like editorials do better and why plain text emails and letters are open and read more often.
4.) Try to offer something of value with every marketing piece even if it’s a free consultation. Other ideas you can try include a special report, case study, an analysis of some kind. Put a dollar value on it if you can.
5.) Try to reduce your readers’ fears by reminding them if they contact you, there is no obligation to buy and there will be no sales pressure. If it isn’t right for them, you can part as new friends.
6.) Tell them exactly what you want them to do. Don’t say things like, ‘We look forward to hearing from you.’ Instead, use an instruction, ‘Email us right after you finish reading this letter.’
7.) Use a headline including self-interest for the reader, specificity, news, curiosity or a combination of these approaches. ‘How a Silly Stunt Cured My Baldness in 5 Days‘ (If you are wondering why this particular headline came to me, just scroll up and look at my picture.)
8.) Communicate with prospects as many times as time and budget allows. Salesman Chet Holmes trained his team to call prospects a minimum of eight times. This is often how long it takes to get a positive response. You can use a sequence of emails, calls and sales letters. The more you get in touch, the higher your response rates will be. (Unless you are trying to sell a knitting course to big game hunters or something. See the next point.)
9.) Spend most of your time thinking about your prospects. If you can figure out what motivates them, what they’re afraid of, what their problems are and what their day looks like you will have a better chance of figuring out a ‘hook’ or ‘angle’ that will appeal to them. The right appeal will skyrocket your response even if you can’t write to save your life.
10.) If you use physical mail, which I highly recommend, put something bumpy or lumpy inside and tie it in with your message. Curiosity alone will get more people to open and read your letter and more opens usually equals more response.
11.) Talk directly to the reader like I am doing with you right now. Use ‘You’ words. You, Your, You’re instead of ‘We’ words like us, our, we’re etc.
12.) Hand write your envelopes and use a real stamp.
13.) Write like you talk.
14.) Use testimonials. People don’t believe you but they believe other people like them who’ve used your products or services.
15.) Show them results. ‘We helped XYZ Corp. increase profits by 17% in one month and here’s what the President, Johnny Mackleroy had to say…’
16.) ABT. Always be testing. You’ll know if you have a winner or loser on your hands before you spend a bundle.
17.) Study other successful promotions in your field and do what they’re doing – only better.
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