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List Building for Entrepreneurs and Realtors

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:41:56 +0000

Everyone talks about the need to build a list if you are going to do any marketing, whether via the internet or by direct mail. Everyone says that you should add to that list on a daily basis. Well, as annoying as they are, I agree with everyone! Having a list, mostly targeted to your industry is the most powerful tool you have in your business. Here are my top ten tips for growing and nurturing your list!

Top 10 List Building Techniques

NUMBER ONE AND MOST IMPORTANT – READ THIS IF YOU SKIP EVERYTHING ELSE! Make sure you are proud of what you send out to your list, every time. I have a newsletter that focuses on marketing for entrepreneurs and realtors. It takes me about 4 hours, 2 days per month to do my newsletter. I am ALWAYS proud of what I am sending and have very few people request to be removed from my list.
Having a list means needing a database. Your database can be an excel spreadsheet or huge CRM product, either way you need to be able to contact those people on a regular basis. Include First Name, Last Name, Address 1, City, State, Zip, Email and Phone at a minimum. Find out more about what a small business database is!
When you are starting out, ADD EVERYONE! – I had a conversation with a client yesterday and he questioned the viability of adding someone you know that has no connection to your business. I have had the most referrals for my business from a friend who has never purchased from me. You never know who your friends and family know who might be a customer.
As for a business card from EVERYONE you meet. We often give our card to people and forget to ask for theirs. Add those people the day you get them and start them on an autoresponder series (see below) to keep yourself fresh in their mind
Autoresponders (or drip marketing) are series of messages that you send to people after putting them in your database. They give information about your business and can gently sell your product or service. Most database programs allow you to set up autoresponders, if you are using Outlook, make a task to send out messages for at least the next few weeks to your new person.
Places to get new list members #1 – I get LOTS of new list members by teaching! Offer a prize and collect business cards or send a sign-up sheet around to all the attendees. Make sure they know they will be added to your list!
Networking Groups – Go to meetup.com and search for local groups you can join. Talking directly with humans is a GREAT way to get people to add to your database!
Social Networking – Using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is a great way to build your list. DO NOT add everyone who “friends” you. From time to time put a link in that encourages them to sign up for your newsletter.
Your Sphere – I know, you have added EVERYONE from your sphere already but have you thought of your doctor, lawyer, accountant, church members, gym club friends, your spouse’s friends, your kid’s friends parents.
Last but not least – NEVER SPAM YOUR LIST! EVER! Recently I had someone belittle me because I wouldn’t take an “opportunity” to sell something to my list. Well…I didn’t believe in it, it didn’t match my list and I declined. I have NEVER regretted not sending something to my list and will never send anything I am not proud of!

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Virtual Assistants – Leveraging Yourself!

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:49:38 +0000

How can hiring a virtual assistant help your small business? Well let me tell you about MY day:

3 Client Phone Calls – 1.5 Hours
2 Fun Phone Calls – 1 Hour
2 Calls to cancel services – 1 Hour
Submitting Sites to RSS Feeds – 2 Hours
Errands – 1.5 Hours
Writing Blog Post – .5 Hour
Emails to 2 Virtual Assistants to do what would take me 10 Hours (I am paying them $50 total) – 15 Minutes

Did you catch that last one? 15 Minutes and $50 to get 10 HOURS of my life back?!?!? Time to lead generate, consult with clients, talk with friends, ANYTHING BUT doing 10 hours of work!!!

If you are in real estate, I have a great post over on active rain with lots of VAs that are ready to help now (http://activerain.com/blogsview/958318/Real-Estate-Virtual-Assistants-Anyone-have-a-good-referral). If you are a small business owner with a great virtual assistant please let me know and I will be happy to post them here for everyone to know about!!!

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How does social networking help small businesses?

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:47:35 +0000

The single-most question I get is “How will social networking make me money?” I am SO not qualified to answer this BUT I can tell you how it has helped my business!

Social Networking Makes You More Approachable

I teach classes and am very aggressive about what I think people should do to grow their business (sometimes even when they don’t ask…:) I have great ideas BUT not everyone likes that IN YOUR FACE information. People who would like to have the info without all the grief can join my networks on www.Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com or Twitter.com and watch without the hype. (I am Taradactyl on all of these and would be your friend – just ask!)

Funny things sometimes happen too! On facebook, someone from my high school class posted our senior picture and I am on there dressed in black – I still dress in black and take a lot of grief for it BUT that makes me more accessible to people who don’t know me BUT who might want to buy my services.

Social Networking Lets You Help People

The other day my business friend Maggie Morris’ Iphone lost my number. She had a situation that was important and needed to reach me. Because she is my friend on facebook, she could send me a message that came to my email and I called her right back. How cool is that?!?!?!

People can watch what you are doing and can copy it. If I find a great new site that could help get me new business, more than likely I will be posting something about it online. If you are in my network, you will see it and be able to take advantage of that opportunity.

Social Networking Is, Well, Social AND Ranks Well On Search Engines

There are many things that you can add to your profile which will be found by humans AND by the search engines. I hear all the time that you need to have backlinks to your site to make it more google friendly. One of the easiest ways EVER to get backlinks to your site is to make them yourself. In your profile make sure to add your website!

Join some groups that you like! In class yesterday Frank was truly puzzled by why he should take the time to join a network. Well Frank sells real estate AND likes boating. People who like boating buy houses on the water. Houses on the water cost more than houses not on the water. Connect the dots!

Anyways….there are some reasons, if anyone out there has better, more comprehensible ideas please feel free to jump in…:)

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How To Pick A Database – Be Careful!

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:50:18 +0000

How to pick a database – the age-old marketing question. When you are setting up your online and offline small business marketing plans it is confusing to know what database you should use and if it will be able to accommodate your email marketing needs going forward.

I will start with my sad tale….

I have a great database that I really like (www.clpsuite.com) which has served me well for a couple of years. Lately I have had a burning desire to have online credit card ordering capabilities so I started using www.1shoppingcart.com for my credit card processing AND they offered email capabilities. I thought GREAT! I can have my database, my credit card processing AND my database all in one. NOPE. They do a great job at credit card processing but as a database not at all (it is almost impossible to get your people to “opt-in” which means you can no longer communicate with them – a REAL problem!).

So now I have a database with email capabilities and a online credit card processing system. Two is not bad. I guess. RATS!

So for everyone else, what are my database recommendations?

General Databases – You can put your clients in, send a reasonable amount of emails and set up auto-responders or activity plans

Microsoft Outlook – already on most computers
Act – I like the sales funnel reports you can get in Act
Wise Agent – BEST Database for Realtors
Top Producer – Widely Used Realtor Database

Email Marketing Programs – If you get over about 400 people in your database I highly recommend that you start having your people in a “real” email program. If I had it to do all over again, I would have started with this as I have about a thousand people and getting them all to opt-in has been a nightmare!

Aweber – This is the one that I (and the internet business mastery guys recommend – see below). Aweber has great email and autoresponder capabilities!
Constant Contact – This is a friendly email program that is great for beginners

I should have listened to the Internet Business Mastery Guys! They have a great podcast on iTunes and I belong to their Internet Business Mastery Academy which tells you start to finish what to do for each aspect of your internet business. They said that Aweber was for email and 1shoppingcart.com was for credit cards. Lesson learned – I will listen to their advice from now on!!

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How Tos – But EVERYBODY Knows How To Do X!

Tara Jacobsen — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:15:44 +0000

They say if you read 3 books on something you are an expert. They say that if you study something for a year you are an expert. They say that you should tell people about it on the internet.

First, who the heck are they? And second, they are right about telling other people!

This week I went on a crusade to get my Mega Chick mastermind group to do some Web 2.0 things (adding their profiles to LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. One fabulous realtor (Lori Crawford) was game but did not know how to do it. She was frustrated and so I wrote a post over on Marketing Artfully on how to do it. It took me a little while BUT it will work for lots of my readers.

I also sat down last week with a great company called Ragged Edge which sells bags made of sailcloth. They were focusing on the fact that their products were made of sailcloth, instead of focusing on the fact that their stuff is wicked cool and practical. If you were looking for a gift, would you search for “cool stocking stuffers” or would would you be searching for “sailcloth wallets”? The hour or so that I spent talking to the owners may have changed their business – they just didn’t know HOW TO do something that I knew.

So how does this apply to your business? And if you tell people how to do stuff, won’t they do it themselves and not buy your product?

First off – tell them how to do things that are RELATED to your product or service! I tell people how to post blogs because I don’t do it for anyone else. My business partner Mary Dado over at Business Writing, Ink tells people how to do marketing. BUT she writes blogs for people and if anyone asks me, I just refer them to her and visa-versa.

Second off – tell them EXACTLY how to do it! I love reading how tos and frequently feel that I can do ANYTHING myself – tra la! Then I try it and realize that it is not as easy as it looks! I also find that I can purchase the product, service or the person’s expertise for MUCH less than I can produce it myself. That is called a SALE!

So, if you know how to do something TELL PEOPLE! Don’t hoard your knowledge or hide your light under a bushel (Mary will be SO happy I have two cheesy metaphors in one sentence!)

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The Big Bang (Marketing) Theory

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:43:52 +0000

So you want to make a splash with your new product? Or have you fallen out of touch with your database and need to get back in front of them? You do NOT have to spend a fortune to make a big splash!

I am going to go over the things you can do to get in front of your customers. The VERY first thing you need to do is know WHO your customers are and get them in a database! My database is my lifeline to my clients and prospects. I do not look up their phone numbers there, I am terrible about making notes in the database (I am blessed to have someone to do that for me), but almost everyone who I come in contact with goes in there.

Standard Fare

I use my database to contact my clients all at once. I send emails to everybody every month. I separate whether they are current Thrive clients or not. The non-Thrive clients get an informational sales pitch (more information than sales pitch) and the clients get great info and extra tips and tricks.

To let you know how non-salesy they are, many people thank me for sending out my newsletter – it is that full of information that I think is interesting and marketing related – PLUS my sales pitch. (If you are not currently on my “newsletter” list and would like to receive it, please send me a message on the Sign Up Now page!)

I also send my sphere, target clients and prospects a piece by mail each month. It is generally related to whatever email I sent out. If you do not know what to send, you might want to consider using the Thrive System!!!

Online Ideas

If you are looking for a bang online, you can’t do better than a blog! The search engines love the HTML pages that blogs develop. They are full of words that search engines can reference and are continually updated. They are also affordable. I pay $10.20 a YEAR for this blog as I have most of my websites under the umbrella of one hosting plan. If you would like to find out how it is doing over the first month, please visit Marketing Artfully, my main site.

Another way to get great coverage online is write Ezine articles. I am getting ready to blast out some really good content on Small Business Marketing over there. The nice thing about Ezines is that the company spends LOTS of time and money on the back end to get them referenced in the search engines (especially google).

The final online way to get traffic to you site or blog is to make comments on another site! I get LOTS of traffic from a comment on the high cost of “Rogue” beer. The key was that the rogue beer site owner is a marketing aware guy. This means that his readers are probably marketing aware. Try to find a site that is similar to you but does NOT compete with your site.

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Arbitrage – How To Leverage Yourself

Tara Jacobsen — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:07:06 +0000

So I have long been fascinated with the concept of Arbitrage! According to Wikipedia, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets.

I first became aware of arbitrage with Google. I am sure you have all come upon a website that uses the arbitrage model – they are the ones with nothing but adsense links on them. Basically with this model if you pay $1 to get a click through on Google and you can sell that click through to someone who will pay $1.10 your arbitrage amount is $.10. Money for nothing and the clicks are free!!!!

Well a while ago Google said that they would not allow that kind of advertising anymore so the scammers started adding fake articles to their adsense sales sites…and then playing the arbitrage game.

What if all the people who were spending all this time to scam the system used their powers for good rather than evil? Could we solve the economic crisis with a click through process, cure cancer or even end world hunger?

When I think about arbitrage (which I do with somewhat of a frequency), I also think about how to get free money or leads. Since I am a licensed Realtor in the state of Florida, I can make money for nothing. If I give a referral of a buyer or seller to another Realtor they will pay me a referral fee for bringing them a client.

I can also get free money for referring products or services I believe in. Some of you may have noticed the new banner about email newsletters, I recommend AWeber to anyone who asks about an email service, if you click on the banner and buy I get a little money. I will NEVER have stray and random ads on my website BUT if there is a service I use and recommend and I can get money for sending them leads – more power to me!

The way to get this kind of money is to sign up for a company’s affiliate program. This means that they will track the sales that come through your link and then pay you a small amount based either on the sale price or just for sending them a lead, these things vary.

You can even benefit from free bennies like the points program on Active Rain (a real estate bloggers website). If you go to my site Marketing Artfully and look on the right hand bar, there is a place to sign up for Active Rain. I get 10% of the points that anyone who signs up through there receives. Zoinks that is nice!

Does your business have any natural friends? Can you add to your users experience by recommending great products (and gaining a little income?) Do you have any way of cross selling your products to someone who may have a complimentary database?

All these things are easy to set up and do – afterwards you just wait for the checks to roll in!

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Small Business Lead Generating – Why you can’t do it!

Tara Jacobsen — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:25:01 +0000

So I was at a Philanthropy lunch today with one of my favorite people, Tammy Leventis of Mail Marketing. On the way over I was telling her to hold on to her hat because we were gearing up to help even more people with the Thrive Program and she was going to be super busy (she provides the printing and mail services for our premier clients).

She was thinking that she should start sending something out too (you think?) BUT she did not have her people in a database. In addition to that she did not know what email program to use. I suggested a couple to her and she said that she would have to wait until she had her people in some kind of order.

SIGH

If this is your thought you will NEVER have everything ready in order to start. You will never take 3 days of your life to data-entry all your contacts into a program. You will never look up all the emails from all those business cards. You will never start!

So what should you do? Start with what you have! If you use Gmail or Outlook or many other programs, just by typing a letter you will get a list of people by that name that you can email to. When I am sending out “special” emails to my internet friends I use this method. When I am just trying to hit my personal contacts I use this method. The glorious part of it is that all those people are my friends! They never yell at me for sending them anything – sometimes they may delete me without looking at it – but they never scream spammer at me!

The next best thing is to start with an excel or database program (here is a good post to read – What Is A Small Business Database?). Enter 5 people every day. At first it will be easy because you will have a backlog of people, but soon you will have to actually TRY to find people to enter into it! Make it a game to figure out who should be in there – your doctor, vet, lawyer, hairdresser, the mailman, your family, friends, networking contacts, co-workers, even old flames!

Can I make a suggestion? Start with The Thrive Contact System even though you are not ready. Try it and see if you get more business – the majority of our clients do! Make enough money off the people that you DO have in it to hire someone to do your data entry. Stop figuring out why you can’t do lead generating and just start! TODAY!

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What is a Small Business Database?

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:09:24 +0000

So I talk a lot about how to use your small business database. Many small business owners do not know exactly what a database is. It can be as broad as a full-blown contact management system to a Excel spreadsheet with names and emails. I am going to review the good and bads of different kinds of databases. Please feel free to chime in with your opinions!

Excel Spreadsheet – If you do not have your contacts in any order yet, an excel spreadsheet can be a god-send! All you need to do is start collecting names, addresses, emails and maybe even have a field for notes. The benefit of an Excel Spreadsheet is that it is easy, you can cut and paste email addresses into almost any email client and it is super easy to make labels from! The drawback to an Excel spreadsheet is that it is hard to set up times to call people or schedule emails to automatically go out. Click here to download a sample contact spreadsheet!

Outlook – Most computers come with Outlook. It is great for mananging your contacts, exporting mailing lists and sending emails. You can schedule tasks for yourself and there are many add on systems for Outlook out there. Here is a list of some neat add ons (here is a Google Search for Outlook Add Ons).

Databases – A full blown database that you are committed to will change your life! It will tell who you to call, when to call them, who to email, when to send out your letters and so much more. You can set up “campaigns” or “plans” that will send out periodical emails or set up tasks for you to do. Many times these are called CRM or Customer Relation Management.

There are MANY different databases that cost NOTHING (EssentialPIM and FreeCRM are two).

There are great mass market databases like ACT, Goldmine, and Wise Agent for Realtors (my personal recommendation – even for non-realtors!) They generally charge a per month fee and are online. That is great since you can access your clients from anywhere – not so great if your internet is down.

The database I use is CLP – it is a relational database that does LOTS of things but you have to set it up yourself! It has MANY features like HTML emails, project plans, sales force automation and multiple users. It is NOT cheap and it is hard to use sometimes BUT everyone asks so I thought I would tell you!!

Whatever you use, remember that you want to make sure that you can export your contacts out of it in case you want to change vendors. Also – it does you no good if you don’t put your people in it!!!!

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Lead Generating for Small Businesses

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 01:47:55 +0000

I LOVE lead generating! Whether I am setting up new websites, thinking up a new email, networking with small business owners or speaking to groups of people, everything I do seems to bring me more business.

I do A LOT of public speaking and many people ask me “how do I make money from giving free classes?” I spend time with friends (who are sometimes clients) doing favors and masterminds and sometimes wonder myself how that makes me money. I help people via email who ask me stray and random questions and who think I may have some special knowledge that could help out.

EVERYONE you meet is a potential client or referral source! I have gotten the most opportunities and advancement in my life from talking to someone who I did not think was “important” – I just thought that they were interesting.

I sometimes think that everyone is connected to someone that can help you, if you just take the time to be interested in them! Who do you know that you haven’t talked to lately? Who does something interesting that you have been wondering about? Every person you meet is a potential lead – so get out there and make some new friends!

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