Today’s post is called ‘How To Attract Leads To Your Online Home Business Using Offline Techniques‘ and is a follow-up piece to yesterday’s ‘How to Take Complete Strangers and Convert Them Into Life-time Customers‘.
As a brief summary, the basic premise that i follow when I set out to attract new customers is:
- Identify my ideal customer demographic.
- Offer immense value to this audience to get yourself some recognition, and begin the presell process.
- Entice your audience to want more from you, which you will give in return for an email address.
- Follow-up with that person through emails on a regular basis, continually offering value for free, and occasionally promoting something relevant that adds even more value to the relationship.
- After the sale, keep following-up and providing even more value, and the occasional promotion.
The Secret To Successful Lead Generation
Now, the ‘secret’ to this is that you have to offer awesome value, without offering more than the products you have to offer provide, or that compliments the value of the product being purchased. If you give everything for free you won’t ever sell anything, and we are running a business after-all.
An example of this might be that you teach a method for doing something manually, and offer software that helps automate or manage the process more efficiently. The software frees up time to work on other area’s of your business, and over time that works out to be far more valuable than the cost of the product. Make sense?
Now, as mentioned, this post is going to be mostly about some of the different techniques you can use to position yourself in front of an audience so that you can become known to them. This is really the beginning of the sales process. From here you will be able to turn strangers into prospects – basically anyone you present to that follows up and visits your website has just gone from suspect to prospect.
It’s important at this point to try and capture their contact information, typically in the form of an email address, on your website so that you give yourself the most opportunity for building a relationship with that person. It’s pretty hard to sell someone at first contact, but it gets much easier with each contact after the first. Typically you need 5 to 7 contacts with someone before they will make a decision to buy.
Below are some of the ways you can get yourself out there in front of that initial audience and start pulling those people to your website, and ultimately onto your prospect lists.
Traditional Offline Methods For Attracting Leads
I’m going to split this up into two categories – techniques you do face-to-face, and techniques that you do not face-to-face. The reason for this is simply that when i first started my home business it was a traditional network marketing business – i didn’t use the Internet at first, and i was following the advice of old school marketers who did most of their marketing face-to-face and i found that very difficult, so i found non-personal ways of marketing my business (offline) and that’s where the second part of the list comes from.
Later parts in this series will discuss online techniques to attract leads into your business.
Let’s get started.
Face-To-Face (Offline) Techniques For Attracting Leads
Family – The first place almost every business tells you to start is by looking to your immediate family. These are people you are close to and typically have more influence over in theory. The problem here is that most people are at least skeptical of home business ventures, so support for what you are doing might be scarce. Where you do have support you often won’t find customers in this group until after they see you are successful.
Friends – In the same vein as with your family, you can attempt to leverage your relationship with your friends to help get your business started. As with family though, many people are skeptical and un-supporting for this kind of business venture so you may or may not find support here. Tread carefully though, and never pressure friends and family into joining you or buying from you, it’s not worth stressing or destroying a relationship over.
Hotel meetings – Back in the day setting up a room in a hotel and inviting as many people as possible to come check out your opportunity or presentation was a great way to get prospects together – the fact that they turned up shows at least some inclination to find out more about what you have to say.
Home meetings – inviting groups of friends or advertising home meetings for smaller groups is another popular way to attract prospects in the old days, and is still widely used in home businesses that sell things like Tupperware, or cutlery, or make-up.
Church Groups – These can be very productive or very not depending on how you approach them. Think about how likely you are to trust people in your church group over people you don’t really know – who seems more earnest? I suggest you heed the same warnings here as you do with friends and family – presenting an offer to join you in business or buy from you is one thing, but being demanding or forceful about it is likely to alienate you, not make you rich.
The Gym – Depending on the type of home business you operate, places like the gym can offer an excellent audience for your product or service – especially if it is connected to health & fitness. Many people who go to the gym are there to better themselves, so you even find an audience for other kinds of opportunities there too.
Buying Lead Lists – this is where someone else has somehow gathered up a list of people interested in learning more about a business opportunity, or about your specific niche (e.g.: insurance and mortgage quotes). Buying lists can be risky because you don’t know how the names were gathered, how fresh the list is, or if there particular needs have already been met or not.
Business Networking Groups – In most cities and larger towns there are networking events where business owners will gather to promote their products and services to each other, and to anyone interested in coming along. Often times you will find business owners offering complimentary services so they will conduct business together, so these events are often worth checking out.
Basically any social event or gathering where you are around people face-to-face can be turned into a marketing event, just be careful not to be pushy and in peoples faces. Conduct yourself professionally and you will be treated accordingly. Even when people turn you down, or are flat-out rude in response to your offer, remain calm and collected, and move on.
There are plenty more types of event and circumstances where you get to talk to people, don’t be afraid to tell them what you do for a living, and what you can do for them.
If you plan on conducting face-to-face prospecting remember to carry plenty of business cards to hand out, or better yet, ask for an email and permission to email them about your offer or product or services.
Now, as i mentioned when i first got started i wasn’t the most out-going person, and i struggled with these kinds of technique. Today i’m far more comfortable about what i do and about telling others about it, but between then and now i had to find other ways of attracting prospects.
Part 1: How to Take Complete Strangers and Convert Them Into Life-time Customers
Part 2: How To Attract Leads To Your Online Home Business Using Face To Face Marketing Offline
Part 3: How To Attract Leads To Your Online Home Business Using Remote Marketing Offline
Part 4: How To Attract Leads To Your Online Home Business Using Online Techniques
Part 5: How To Attract Leads To Your Online Home Business Using Online Techniques – Continued