Imagine being introduced to you ideal prospect.  You know their industry.  You’ve helped dozens just like them.  You know the pain they’re experiencing. You are certain that your products and services will not only solve their problem but also help them take their business to the next level.

So you bring them into your conference room.  You pull out a brochure published three years ago and slide it across the table.  “Read this,” you say, rising to leave and smiling.  You leave them to the eight pages of features and function and jargon.

As soon as you are out of sight, they run for their lives.

You’d never do this in real life. Never.  You’d thoroughly put your knowledge into context for them.  You’d answer their questions.  You’d point out the problems that other companies, similar to them, faced and what you did to help them.  You’d connect the dots for them.  You’d give them confidence that they came to the right place.

But are you, in fact, doing it virtually?

If your website is old, stale, and really nothing more than an electronic brochure – it’s not going to be a rich experience for your online visitors and as a result, you are not going to get many nibbles.

We can’t ignore that 80% of buyers are taking control of the sales cycle preferring to search for information prior to reaching out by phone or email.  They prefer to qualify themselves.  Your website needs to provide the information that help them connect the dots.

The Duct Tape Marketing 7 Steps can and should be applied to your online presence.

1. Develop Strategy Before Tactics

Putting tactics before strategy is what you do when you optimize a suboptimal site.  Putting tactics before strategy is signing up for bunches of groups on LinkedIn but never participating.  Putting tactics before strategy is synching your updates to hit Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn without thinking about how those audiences may differ.

Strategy means spending some time putting yourself in the shoes of your visitor and critically thinking about what they would like to find.  Think back to the discussions you’ve had with new prospect what were the questions they asked?  What are the unspoken concerns?  When they ask for references, do they typically specify by size of company, industry, location?

If you have a lot of competition, differentiation can remove you from the beige line up of seemingly identical companies.  If you find yourself in the beige line up – price will be the selection factor.  How do you effectively differentiate from the crowd?

How do you showcase your customers and methodologies?

Can your website handle downloadable white papers?  Newsletter sign up forms? Recorded webcasts?

It just makes sense to postpone investing money in keywords and pay-per-click until you have these issues sorted out, prioritized and executed according to a schedule.

2. Embrace the Marketing Hourglass

The Marketing Hourglass is the process the prospect goes through to become a customer and ultimately a referring customer who also looks to buy more from you.  The stages of the Marketing Hourglass are Know-Like-Trust-Try-Buy-Repeat-Refer.

You’ll want to have content that addresses each phase of the progression, with heavy emphasis on the Know-Like-Trust phase.

If your website is rich with great resources that are truly helpful to the visitor, your customers will be happy to send links to their friends and associates.  Yes, it’s possible to receive referrals without a robust website – but think about how difficult it is to get someone on the phone.  And if you do get them on the phone and they just aren’t ready, how do you keep their interest?  How do you ensure that they are getting what they need to move at their own pace along the Know-Like-Trust-Try-Buy-Repeat-Refer continuum?

3. Adopt the Publishing Model

By Publishing Model I mean a commitment to publishing good information (easily understood by customers and prospects) that helps them put your products and services in context.  Your content serves as a showcase for your expertise, the customer experience your customers enjoy, and helpful information and guidelines for those who are beginning to explore the possibility of making an investment in product and services.

List these things out.  If it’s a long list and your website is barren – you may want to hire a writer to knock off some of the pieces.  Think about presentations that you’ve given:  could those contain 3 or 4 short articles you could attack quickly?

Don’t forget about customer testimonials and case studies.  These are wonderful complements to “How To” type articles and guideline articles, e.g. “The 7 Things You Should Do Before Implementing an ERP System.”

Press Releases provide another category of content that you can add to your website.  You may have to stop, focus and think about it – but challenge yourself to commit to one press release each month.

4. Create a Total Web Presence

Once you’ve got your content publishing plan going with fresh content being added to your site on a regular basis, think about promoting your sight.  Take the most meaty and newsworthy of your press releases and pay a distribution service (to which journalists opt in) to distribute your press release online, this creates links to your site and an opportunity to reach new audiences.

Use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to share links back to website content.  Be sure to think about how the audiences on each platform may differ.  For example, I am updating Twitter frequently during the day.  I am updating Facebook to a lesser extent.  I am updating LinkedIn even less frequently.  Why?  Because the audiences on each platform are very different.  LinkedIn is very formal and so I keep my update very business-like and buttoned-down.  Facebook is a group of friends, family and friendly business associates – therefore the tone of the update might need to be different than LinkedIn.  Twitter is to platforms what Happy Hour is to the work week – more relaxed, more fun, and very conversational.  This is why I don’t synch these platforms.

Make sure that visitors to your site can do something other than read.  For example, take a poll, comment on a blog article, download a white paper, and watch a video.

Now watch your analytics and get excited!

5. Orchestrate the Lead Generation Trio

Make sure your lead generation is complemented by advertising and public relations.  Both LinkedIn and Facebook advertising is very affordable and you have the ability to do some slicing and dicing demographically to make you effort focused.  I have done general advertising (simply pointing people to my website) and 2-step advertising (providing a white paper upon completion of a form) – and while both have driven good traffic to my website, having a call to action like a white paper with a brief form to fill out, has allowed me to capture emails for ongoing nurture marketing.

In addition to advertising, I try to stick to the schedule of one press release per month, distributed through a reputable distribution service, as part of my trio.  As mentioned above, this results in valuable back links to my site which the search engines love.  Sometimes news happens twice a month.  Some months there is nothing to announce.  But if you set the bar at one per month on average, you will see a steady increase in traffic to your site.

6. Drive a Lead Conversion System

It’s important to have a lead nurturing system in place to keep you in front of prospective buyers.  Taking a one-to-many approach, a monthly eNewsletter is a good way to stay in front of prospects.

I would also suggest setting up Google Alerts on all of your prospects.  The information that you gather from these alerts increases your intelligence on the company.  Secondly, it gives you a reason to check in with them without repeatedly asking “are you ready to buy?”  For example, a Google Alert includes a news item that they have received funding, or have closed a key deal, or have made a contribution to the community.  You can then send an email congratulating them, recognizing the accomplishment; and that attention to detail will set you apart from the competition.

You can also look for opportunities to send them case studies of customers in their industry or companies that have faced the same challenges they are facing.

7. Live By the Marketing Calendar

I like to say building something remarkable comes brick-by-brick.  You have to start somewhere.  You have to push.  Having a marketing calendar, a list of action items with deadlines, will help you gain critical mass.  It feels painful now, but thirty days from now you will have made progress.  A year from now you will have made tremendous progress.  But mapping the course ensures keeping on course.  And that is the power of the marketing calendar.

I know that I’ve outlined a bunch of action items.  In total it will seem overwhelming.  However, if you list and prioritize and set a deadline – put on paper a calendar of what is due and when, item-by-item – you will improve your online presence.  If you need help, that’s where the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant’s Network comes in.

About Dawn Westerberg

Dawn Westerberg http://dawnwesterberg.com/ invites business owners to "fall in love with your business again" through sound marketing strategies that bring results and profits. An Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Dawn Westerberg serves clients throughout the United States and Canada. She publishes a blog on B2B Marketing http://feeds.feedburner.com/DawnWesterbergConsultingLlc.

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What’s the most common complaint of the small business owner?  There aren’t enough hours in the day.

Everyone is short on time

Between providing you customers quality products and services, handling your invoicing, managing employees, prepping for quarterly taxes, etc. – where to you find the time to squeeze in the new stuff you need to learn?

Where do you find the time to clear the deck and begin to think strategically about marketing, when, as one business owner told me, “There need to be 30 hours in a day – that way I can work 24 hours a day and still get 6 hours sleep.”

There are things everyone must do

There are things you must make time for. Period.  If you don’t back-up your laptop regularly, if it crashes – you’ve lost hours and hours of content, forms, templates and contact information that will need to be rekeyed, recreated and replaced – all of which costs you more time.

If you don’t pay your taxes on time, you will pay a fine.  If you continue to not pay your taxes, you will lose assets and perhaps go to jail.

If you don’t respond to your customers, you’ll lose your livelihood.

Re-Classify Marketing as a “Must Do”

What things need to go in order for you to spend time on your marketing (i.e. ensuring the future viability of your business)?

There are probably many tasks that you would be better off (in terms of both time and money) delegating or outsourcing.

Do you need to get up an hour earlier?  Do you need someone to hold you accountable?

Do your marketing homework – Strategy before tactics

Before you spend a dime on marketing campaigns, invest in developing a marketing strategy: read John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing, enroll in the Duct Tape Marketing Online Catalyst, engage with a Duct Tape Marketing Consultant or all three.

Start with 1 thing and add accordingly

Start with one thing and start small. Just as you don’t go from walking to the mailbox once a day to running a marathon – you don’t go from no marketing to robust response rates overnight.

Perhaps you commit to writing a monthly newsletter that is emailed to your customers and prospects.  This one thing might require that you a) build your email list, b) write the content for the newsletter and c) learn how to use an email distribution platform like Constant Contact or MailChimp.

Recognize that you will be on a learning curve but keep at it!

It will get easier in Month 2 and perhaps by Month 4 you will have such mastery that you can easily add a second layer to your marketing tactics, such as beginning a monthly public relations plan or systemizing your referral program.

When is the best time to plant a tree?  Twenty years ago.  What is the second best time to plant a tree?  Today.  Decide that your business is worth finding the time for marketing and commit to taking small but meaningful steps toward a thriving, growing business.

About Dawn Westerberg

Dawn Westerberg http://dawnwesterberg.com/ invites business owners to "fall in love with your business again" through sound marketing strategies that bring results and profits. An Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Dawn Westerberg serves clients throughout the United States and Canada. She publishes a blog on B2B Marketing http://feeds.feedburner.com/DawnWesterbergConsultingLlc.

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Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Give me your money -

I’ve got a product for you!

Unfortunately, too many marketing messages boil down to not much more than a self-serving pitch – if you’ve got money to spend, I’ve got products and services for you to buy.  Because of such superficial communications, buyers have become masters of filtering, deleting without reading, and screening calls (to name just a few) to avoid this garbage.  And, if the recipients of these flimsy marketing pitches weren’t so busy trashing them, they might just be insulted, not just merely annoyed, at the person and brand sending the message.

How much better would it be to make your message more like a valentine?

Valentine’s Day is all about relationships.  Relationships are all about caring.  Relationships take time to develop.  And the best relationships are usually bolstered by an attitude of giving versus an attitude of getting.

The Duct Tape Marketing network believes in the Marketing Hourglass.  The Marketing Hourglass reminds us to assist the prospect in their journey through Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Refer, Repeat.  That means treating our prospect in a special way.  It’s Valentine’s Day every day.

Valentine’s Day is all about making someone feel special.  Does our marketing approach make people feel special?  Or is it merely lowest common denominator messaging:  here’s what I sell, are you ready to buy?

Valentine’s Day is a few days away.  Why not select 3 customers, 3 prospects, 3 referral partners and 3 influencers to send a personal note to?

Look to compliment their contributions to the community or the industry.  You might also talk about a way in which they’ve impressed you, something they’ve done or said that made an impact and either affirmed your approach or caused you to change your approach.  You might thank them for their business and their kind words about your business.  You might praise an article they’ve written or congratulate them on any recognition they’ve received.

When you reach out to them – think about making the vehicle of your message radically different than the typical communication they receive in the course of a day.  Why not buy 12 valentines and hand-write your note?  Or, couple your note with something (a little gift) that makes for a 3-dimensional or lumpy mailing – curiosity about what might be inside means it will get opened.

When you make them feel special, you differentiate yourself from the hundreds who would rather spam and play a losing numbers game.

Let your marketing valentine communicate:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Here’s what I think

Is remarkable about you!

About Dawn Westerberg

Dawn Westerberg http://dawnwesterberg.com/ invites business owners to "fall in love with your business again" through sound marketing strategies that bring results and profits. An Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Dawn Westerberg serves clients throughout the United States and Canada. She publishes a blog on B2B Marketing http://feeds.feedburner.com/DawnWesterbergConsultingLlc.

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