Online marketing - what are you finding works these days?

Oh that means that you need to have established contact with a person, either face to face or via email and they need to consider your information or service valuable before they would trust you enough to do business with you.

If you ask for business the first time you meet someone your out, by about the 7th contact with a prospective client, you can explore whether there is a business opportunity there or not.

 

Maybe if you can convince Sim to abolish these -

1. No Self Promotion or Advertising
   • You are not permitted to promote or advertise your own business in any way in forum posts, profile posts, media, resources or comments on any other content on the site.
   • There are specific exceptions for Business Members who have certain promotional activities that they are allowed to undertake within specific sections of the website. Promotion or advertising by Business Members outside of these designated sections of the site is strictly forbidden. Refer to the Business Members Guide for more information on how Business Members are permitted to promote their business on the forums.
   • To be clear - using the "Location" field for anything other than a physical location or posting links or promotional material in profile posts or status updates - is not permitted.
2. No Soliciting Business
   • Soliciting business is requesting or suggesting that people contact you or visit your website.
   • You are not permitted to solicit business either directly or indirectly in forum posts, profile posts, comments or any other content on the site.
   • You are not permitted to promote your services or business via unsolicited private conversations - unless explicitly invited to do so.
   • Someone posting on the forums asking for recommendations of a service provider does NOT constitute an invitation to contact them via private conversation and you are not permitted to do so.
   • These rules apply to all members, including Business Members.
3. No Linking to Your Own Website in Posts
   • You are not permitted to link to your own website or blog in forum posts or other content for the purposes of referencing an article or content you have already written. You should quote the relevant parts of your article for the purposes of discussion on this site - providing sufficient detail to remove the necessity for members to visit your site.
   • You may refer to the fact that more content exists on your own website - but you may not link to it or provide pseudo-links such as a written description of the URL of where to find it.

 

Agreed - take your time. There is nothing worse at a networking event than someone pushing their business

 

@Biz i paid some guy on elance in india $50 to get me 5000 email addresses -that i gave him target towns/ genres, added that to mailchimp mail list and whala, started getting calls. Also on mailchimp you can see who has opened up your email campaign/newsletters mulitple times and ranked etc I usually follow up with the top 20 people or so with a call or personal message. They never know that mailchimp can record how many times they opened an email, if they open it more than a few times they must be interested in whataver is on there.

 

@Andrew H, you ought to have a closer looks at the mailchimp terms of use–they're pretty clear about sending unsolicited email It's illegal.

Unless your friend on elance set up a lead capture page in which people entered their details and agreed to be emailed in which case, carry on.

 

Do you happen to work for one of the local RE Agencies?

A couple of my business/emails have been subscribed to mailing lists and curious as to how they got the info as I didn't sign up and this could explain it!

 

@Steven Ryan your probably right
@Kinnon Bell no i don't, but someone could have done the same.
@Simon Hampel could be. Since sold the business, the ROI and wording was remarkable, when they clicked on 'how did i get this email?'. Just saying it worked - very well.

 

Spot on. I am a groupon user and I have never gone back to a company where I used a groupon and paid full price for anything. I have found that other people who use these deals are like me. We are basically cheapskates!

 

Not sure where thjs theory is coming from but i definitely disagree with it. Of course building relationships is very important but imo theres no hard and fast rule.

Besides, there are plenty of people out there who dont have the time for someone to take 7 meetinfs or contacts before they get to the point.

Sometimes it's a natural fit immediately, sometimes it takes a while, sometimes it will never work

 

We have just setup chat software on our site to engage customers browsing. Only challenge may be the peak times of website visits are often after hours, and you have to be good at typing.

We've definitely converted sales out of it but is time consuming.

The new year we will be doing a lot more Youtube product demonstrations.

 

What type of product / service do you have?

 

Good reading in here, we need move on advertising some time soon. Word of mouth doesn't work like it used to. Slightly different though for us as we of no use to the general public really

 

Automotive products

 

OK, I've just hacked my husbands profile You guys love property, I love marketing and loved reading your comments on what works and what doesn't with online marketing. You all make valid points and I agree with many. I often steer clients away from google ad words and SEO only because it can be very expensive, although it does depend on the industry you are in and who your target client is. Facebook still has merits although is becoming more competitive but with the correct strategies it can work. Email campaigns if executed correctly can be highly effective with next to no cost if you do it all yourself. Still a small fee if outsourced. It is easily measured and you can then further market to those showing interest when you review the reports. Email automation can work wonders (helps push people down your sales funnel), again depending on your product/service and target market. LinkedIn is great for business to business and helps you get to the decision makers and allows you to build your own database to market to. The 7 points of contact can be a variety of things, phone call, email, meeting, newsletter etc. Studies have shown most humans require the 7 touch points before they make a final decision to buy. It stems from a variety of things but essentially people want to make sure they are dealing with/purchasing what they feel is right for them. Lastly, face to face (networking) and referrals I find are the best ways to market your business. I must add, one last very important point, and that is you need more than one marketing effort to produce a great result. Many try FB only and don't get the desired results. We all need a variety of what I call marketing pillars to hold our business up. Without it, your business will crumble. I could go on but best stop here, thanks for reading

 

Most professionals I know who use Linkedin hate the advertising and tend to block ads in their feeds

 

Sure, but I was referring to using it to connect and build relationships with people you wouldn't otherwise be in contact with. If you join groups and participate, with no "advertising" intention and purely just to help share your knowledge you are quickly seen as the expert in your field. You will be surprised how quickly others will then want to connect with you and the rest just follows without you having to try. I know it works, I've done it. A little bit like this forum

 

Interesting read - we have been using SEO for a few years - make the mistake of using a cheap indian company which really done my head in and used a guy in Melbourne after I almost gave up on SEO a couple of years back. Happy to share his details by pm with you guys. Never used ad-words until a month back - not bad.

As someone mentioned - 'what the customer wants' is always the key to success - converting leads comes down to your sales skills and well as straight out honesty and treating people with respect (customer service)

Facebook does not work for me, tried but will not persist.

Brand is key - in our industry becoming a known brand is difficult due the many players with little/no barriers to entry. Serving clients well leads to the referrals which is our greatest source of business. Truthfully we have built a monster business with minimal advertising - apart from the $1000 business member fee for property chat

Interesting to read the spam comments. I bought a mail list off someone, never used it, and would love for him to fall off a cliff and so many others got scammed in the same industry. Will not do it again. I try to hit my database often and this needs to be improved as we just are struggling with time - which is good and bad. Good we are making customers happy and making money - bad cause we could be doing so much more.

Off topic but on topic - what CRM are you using? we use mailchimp, but am trying to implement a CRM - would like to hear who others are using and why?

Cheers Ivan