Griff says...Generating leads

In my experience, for other than large businesses, lead generation is the most requested service. My focus for our blog content will be small and medium size businesses, entrepreneurs and consultants.

Let's explore why lead generation is such a need before providing some answers. If you are a small or medium size business, you have a limited number of customers which produces relatively low repeat business and relatively few referrals. Your brand/market awarenFess is not sufficient to attract people based on reputation or word of mouth. That means you have to find ways to generate awareness on your own. That's what lead generation is.

A few choices for lead generation:

Digital marketing

• Generally this refers to tactics such as email marketing, SEO, social media, google ads and similar services.
• In order to leverage these, you need expertise or a budget to outsource the services to get results.
• If you have the resources, then direct them to create a marketing plan and proceed.
• If you have a budget but not resources, then conduct local google searches for digital marketing consultants and make a selection.

But for the vast majority of businesses that have a limited budget and no resources to conduct digital services, you are mainly left with email marketing.

Here is how to proceed:

• Identify your target market audience and create a profile.
• Most likely you either do not have an inhouse contact list or it is small or it is not up to date.
• Plan to spend several thousand dollars initially and several thousand after each phase of results from the previous sales and marketing efforts.
• Find a quality data list provider that is affordable and who executes email campaigns.
• Provide your target audience profile and get a quote for at least 10,000 names and 2 email campaigns per month for a calendar quarter. If you do not have a source, you can google for data list and email providers or contact me for one of my sources.
• This is called unsolicited emailing and many companies or products will not allow it (Constant Contact, MailChaimp, etc.) so make sure your provider allows it. It is not illegal and does not violate the Can Spam Law as long as guidelines are followed. Only the customer-based emailing providers and products will tell you it is illegal. Just ignore them because their advice is self-serving.
• Your selected provider must be able to generate at least 10% opens and 3% clicks or they are not who you want. They must provide a report that includes identification of the opens and clicks. These are your warm leads and require aggressive and persistent followup. The provider should forward you the list for unlimited usage.
• Engage and have them execute
• Followup the opens and clicks and continue warm calling. You should generate at least 10 prospects and close a deal or two after several months.
• Repeat process and continue

Direct marketing

• Post card mailing is about the only marginally effective means anymore for non-large businesses. Part of the problem is you do not know who is interested unless they contact you. Unlike digital marketing where identification of interested recipients is achievable.
• 1% response is about all that can be expected.
• You still need the target audience profile and data list (see above).
• You still either need a marketing resource to an outsourced provider/printer for the content and mailing.
• Engage and execute every few months.

Advertising

• TV advertising is too expensive
• Local radio may work if your audience is local.
• Google ads can be effective if you have a resource with experience
• Otherwise, revert to email marketing.

Let me know your thoughts and questions and prior experiences that may have been good or bad so I can help you with advice.

Griff says…McGwire’s Steroids Confession Doesn’t Hold Up Under Testing

Let me first say I was an avid Mark McGwire fan until the baseball steroids hearings a few years ago. I can’t remember being so disappointed, incredulous, insulted and skeptical of someone who was supposed to be there to tell the truth about steroids. Did he really not realize that everyone who heard him from that moment on was convinced he had taken steroids? My impression was that he came across a bit slow and less than intelligent, certainly evasive. Of course he now blames that series of miscues on his lawyers, stating they told him to avoid the comments because he was not offered the proper immunity. That was either poor advice or a crock.

It seems to me he is still not accepting accountability. Apparently we are supposed to believe that he is finally coming forward now, after all these years, to tell the truth because he just can’t stand hiding it anymore. It seems much more plausible to me that he had to because the Cardinals required a formal statement as a condition for job acceptance or that he was worried about the relentless daily media questions and stress, or both. If it was the latter he is in for a surprise as he has just given the media new fodder that will create more stress and exacerbate the conflict even longer because he will now be available to the media on a regular basis for the rest of the year.

Whatever his real reasons and intentions for his confession at this time, good or bad, he messed it all up again. I wouldn’t have thought he could do worse than the hearings but he may have broken yet another baseball record!

McGwire has to either be incredibly vain and self-absorbed or ignorant. It is incredulous to me that he says he does not know what substance he took for over a decade and that he thinks it did not help him hit home runs. If he thinks most people believe him he is truly ignorant. For someone to take steroids for so many years you would posit he would have learned a little about them by now. Does he really believe that the steroid he took was so selective in its effects that it was able to distinguish its purpose in his body chemistry and help himself heal faster but not make his muscles and vision stronger? He says he took small doses so I guess he thinks it had little impact. Yet he did indeed rehab quickly and effectively, as well as increase his home runs. That’s no little impact.

As far as I know, steroids are not selective like that. If he did take some specific unknown steroid substance that only enhances the rehab process but not muscle and strength-building or vision, then he better name it so that the community can verify that he’s correct. It seems preposterous to me but I’m willing to keep an open mind about it. Oh yeah, but that won’t happen because he doesn’t remember the name. Of course for some reason he cannot go back to the doctors or suppliers of said drug and confirm what it was exactly. How stupid does he think the public is?

From my limited knowledge of steroids, not only does it aid the rehab process and build muscle mass much faster than normal, but it also enhances vision. I suppose he thinks increased visual acuity has no impact on hitting a baseball either. No I’m sure it was his unique hitting technique that imparted extra backspin on the ball which created the lift needed for more frequent home runs. Yeah, that’s it.

Look, I’ve already forgiven him for what he did, and actually feel very sorry for him. But to think that his home run record and many of the other home run years he had were not improved by taking steroids is totally foolish. In this instance, telling the truth has certainly not enhanced his chances to get into the Hall of Fame. I for one have to vote against it.

He went on to explain all the times in his life that he was a proven homerun hitter and the records he created. But how do we know that the year he broke the home run record he would have only hit 30 if he had not been on steroids? Or maybe he would have had a shortened season due to inability to rehab soon enough to have a productive season. The whole idea is nonsense and quite insulting to my intelligence.

In order to accept his statement at all, I have to believe that the only purpose for his confession was the innate benefit of a confession itself – coming clean and asking for forgiveness. Hopefully he now feels better, although it appears that he will continue on with a deluded image of his baseball feats and himself. I see that he got a hero’s welcome the other day in St. Louis. He is the local favorite so I guess they are going to ignore the holes in his confession and move on. Not sure anyone other than a St. Louis fan will agree however. When will we get the real story from any of these guys? Every so-called confession raises more questions, skepticism and fan indignation from my viewpoint. Griff says...later.

Sales and Marketing challenges

Griff says...What is your biggest sales and marketing challenge?

1. Generating leads 
2. Turning leads to prospects 
3. No resources to do sales
4. No resources to do marketing 
5. No literature
6. Uncertainty about target audience
7. Closing prospects 
8. Competition
9. Limited budget
10. Finding affirdable sales people 
11. Finding affordable marketing resources 
12. Market/brand awareness 
13. Repeat business 
14. Customer satisfaction

We will tackle these one at a time or in order of your priority responses. Stay with us for the journey to increased revenue and more effective sales and marketing.