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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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Small business leads – filling your pipeline!

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:07:27 +0000

Lead generating for small businesses is VITAL! Any small business owner will tell you that the most important part of STAYING in business is having new clients and servicing past clients – all of these are part of your pipeline.

Your pipline is the people who have (in order from low priority to high priority):

Noticed you are in business but are not currently using your services
Have indicated that they are interested in something you have to offer
Have purchased from you in the past but are not currently using your services
Have purchased from you in the past AND have referred other people to you!

The order may seem amazing to some of you – people who are interested in purchasing RIGHT NOW are less important than old clients? YES! Old clients have shown a willingness to spend their hard earned dollars with your company and should be cherished. You should be contacting them regularly and making sure that they know you value them!

THEN you should have a system set up to contact potential clients regularly until they are ready to buy. A database is a great tool for this as it will let you know regularly who you should be contacting, be it by email, phone or mail.

If you do not have a formal pipeline in place right now – get one. Start a list of EVERYONE you have ever done business with and make sure they are in your database. Then make a list of everyone who has expressed an interest in your services. Rank them according to their level of urgency AND have some sort of system for determining their probability of closing. A good system is 90% for people you have sold and are just waiting for payment, 50% is someone who might buy but who has finalized the decision and 10% for someone who has requested more info.

When you are getting ready for your day, you now know who to call! Start with the 90%-ers and work your way down. Send emails to remind the 10%-ers about your service. AND don’t forget to contact a couple of old customers with something relevant to your business – an email newsletter, an article you think they might enjoy or just a “hi, just thinking of you” email.

If you would like more information about lead generating sources join our FREE Marketing Newsletter For Entrepreneurs! This month’s article will be focusing on sources for leads for all small businesses.

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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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CRM – What is it and how can it help your small business marketing?

Tara Jacobsen — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:16:18 +0000

CRM for Small Businesses sounds very ominous. It could mean almost anything! What it actually is is Customer Relationship Management. According to Wikipedia’s definition of CRM, it is “a term applied to processes implemented by a company to handle its contact with its customers”. WOW does that sound dry and not fun!

What it means to the small business owner is the way you handle your customers and prospects from the time you learn about them until they become a clients and beyond. It is everything you send them via email, all the invoices you send, how you treat their questions and concerns and how often you contact them.

The most important part of my CRM is my database! It stores all my suspects, prospects and clients in a handy dandy place. I can categorize them according to their industry, where I found them, what products they have bought and notes about the last contact that I had with them. (if you need info on how to start your small business database please read “what is a small business database“).

For today we will just talk about how CRM affects our prospects (people who we know about BUT who have not used our services yet!)

In my business I always strive to have a database that people are excited to be a part of! I don’t spam them or sell their names. I make sure that every time I communicate with them it is something that will be valuable to them. Some things that we do are:

Send monthly email newsletters with an article about a topic that would appeal to small business owners – this doubles as a marketing piece since it is branded with the Thrive look
ALWAYS include something extra – I tend to find lots of free technology tools around the internet and include them in my technology tips section
Don’t forget to send your newsletter to your current clients – boy was this a doozy on our part! We did not send out the newsletter to our current clients since it DOES have a lead generation function but one of them saw it anyways…:) She was so excited about the article that we realized it should go to EVERYONE, not just the people we were trying to sell our services to!
Send postcards with the Thrive branding – this is more marketing based and just adds another layer of reinforcement that we believe in the service that we provide to our clients
Auto-responders – we have a series of autoresponders that start as soon as we put a new prospect into our database. This tells about The Thrive Client Contact Program, provides testimonials AND gives them information about lead generation and followup techniques (DO NOT send a series of marketing pieces to your prospects without providing a value to them!)

If you pay attention, it is easy to find ways to contact your prospects in a fun and useful manner that will result in them becoming clients. Just because they are not ready to buy this instant doesn’t mean that you should ignore them – use the time to show a value and build trust so that when they are ready to purchase they are predisposed to working with you!

We would like to invite you to sign up for our Newsletter (and Thrive Followup Emails) – Just sign up to the right!!!

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