5 Easy Ways You Can Start Getting More Customers Right Now

Here’s the deal:

I can promise you that your company is losing a truck load of money… and you’re not even aware of it.

Most business owners spend the vast majority of their attention on making NEW income, and hey—who can disagree?

You spend so much time and effort building your business. You put your name, your finances, and possibly even your family on the line.

And I’m the first to admit:

You SHOULD be focused on making new money and getting in brand new leads.

Hey, it’s what I built my business on!

But here’s the truth and something most business owners don’t realize:

The number of times you follow-up with a prospect who hasn’t closed yet is directly related to the revenue you’ll generate.

Say what?

You heard me right!

Here are some often-cited sales statistics:

• 2% of sales are made on the first contact
• 3% on the second
• 5% on the third
• 10% on the fourth
• 80% on the fifth to twelfth contact

WHOA!

No matter how great you are at sales, chances are there are leads you haven’t closed on first attempt.

That’s why follow-up is needed… to reach out to the leads that didn’t close the first time.

Ask yourself:

How many times do YOU follow up with leads?

Once? Three times? Never?

Not enough, right?

Most business owners I talk to admit they’re not following up enough with their leads… leads they work so hard to generate.

The majority of businesses in the U.S. are small businesses—over 28 million! (U.S. Small Business Administration, 2016.) The majority don’t have massive marketing budgets nor marketing teams.

And this means:

1. You as a business owner don’t have money to lose.

and

2. Marketing dollars absolutely must return value to you.

But before I show you 5 ways to kill it at follow-up and make more money from the leads you already have…

I want to help you understand two critical marketing metrics.

No matter how long you’ve been in business, you’re going to learn something here you can apply right away!

There are the 2 main stats you want to look at when measuring your marketing.

Cost per Lead (CPL)

and

Return On Investment (ROI)

You may have heard about these metrics before, but hear me out:

Say you send out 5,000 postcards.

It costs you $2,000 to send these out. (Postage is the lion’s share of your postcard marketing cost.)

And you get 50 calls. Nice!

$2,000 / 50 calls = 40

Your CPL (cost per lead) is $40.

Now:

Say you close 20% of those 50 calls — that’s 10 sales, right?

Let’s say every sale brings in $2,000 for your company.

You made $20,000.

Subtract the $2,000 you spent on the campaign, and you’ve made $18,000.

Divided by your original investment of $2,000, that means…

You’ve made a 900% ROI — which is awesome!

Great ROI is what you’re after.

A great, high ROI means that you spent your marketing dollars wisely… meaning you’ve gained revenue for your business without losing money.

It doesn’t matter how many people responded to your campaign. What’s important is how much business ($$$) you earned as a result of your marketing efforts.

But…

What about the 40 leads (that cost you $40 each to acquire) that didn’t close? You wouldn’t throw $1,600 in the trash, would you?

But here’s what’s worse than throwing away that initial $1,600 investment.

Throwing away your potential $80,000 in revenue!

Because if you don’t follow up with those leads, that’s basically what you’re doing.

But you’re here because you want to fix that.

You want MORE ROI!

You can do this by closing as many leads as possible.

Remember how I pointed out earlier that 80% of leads close after the 5^th and sometimes the 12^th contact?

That means your lead still may close!

Here’s what most business owners don’t see:

It’s MUCH easier to close someone who’s already reached for your product or service than it is to generate brand new interest from someone who’s never heard of you.

That’s where systematic follow-up comes in!

Remember:

The more follow-up, the more you’re likely to close the sale…

The more ROI!

Cha-ching!

Here’s what I mean by “funnel.”

A “funnel” is a process or system where your prospect is systematically contacted, and educated, about your business and its benefits.

It’s called a funnel because you filter someone from being new to your business down (as if through a funnel) to the point where they eventually say YES! And purchase, of course!

A funnel can be simple or complicated…

But here’s an example of a really simple one:

Day 1: Lead calls in

Day 2: First email

Day 4: Follow-up phone call

Day 8: Second email

Day 9: Second follow-up call

…And so on. You get the idea.

(Later on I’ll explain how to do this with email marketing.)

Again:

The more you with a lead… the more likely they’ll convert into your customer!

Let’s take a look at smart (and cost-effective!) ways for you to follow up:

1. Phone calls

Seems obvious, right?

But you’d be surprised at how little this happens!

You and your sales team (don’t be self-conscious if you don’t have a team — your sales team could be you and your spouse!) should regularly touch base with leads to check in and see where their interest lies.

See, at one point they were interested enough to contact you, so that interest is what you call to check on!

Get a few tips on how to master the art of the follow-up call.

2. Email Drip Campaigns

An “email drip campaign” is a series of emails sent to your prospects with specific preset messaging and timing.

How many emails and what they say is up to you!

FREE report: How to use set-it and forget-it emails to automatically follow up with prospects and close more leads

An email drip campaign continually “warms up” prospects so your business remains in touch with them.

That way when your prospects are ready to buy…

They call YOUR business!

Because you stayed top of mind with consistent emails.

Remember:

In order for an email drip campaign to happen,

You’ve got to have the prospect’s email address!

There are a few ways you can collect email addresses…

• Your website: a standard contact form that gets filled in with an email
• Landing page: a web page specifically designed to collect leads (emails!)
• New calls coming in to your office: ask for their emails!

Your website and landing page need to have a fill-in form so prospects can easily contact you.

A landing page is different from a website because a landing page is ONE page. Your website is your whole website with many different pages on it — and all of those pages should have a lead-capture form!

A landing page could be one page of your website, or it could even stand alone. A landing page is specifically designed to capture prospects’ contact information for a specific purpose. For example, you could have a landing page that is designed to inform prospects about a specific event you have coming up… with the intention of getting them to sign up to attend—like this one we have!

Whenever a prospect fills in their information online, whether on a landing page or on your website’s contact page, those emails should automatically be entered into your email drip campaign. Whoever is in charge of your website can do this for you… or if you’re the one in charge of your website, there are many plugins and landing page platforms that will do this easily for you.

We capture the contact information of prospects who call in. (This new caller checklist works so well, we use it here at PostcardMania!)

Make sure whoever handles the leads that call in enters that information into your email drip campaign too!

Grab this email marketing report for additional help.

And if you don’t want to do all of that work yourself…

Our Catch and Close Booster Package helps convert your website visitors into leads AND automatically follows up with them via email to get them to contact you or make a purchase!

You don’t have to do any work at all – we install the lead capture tool onto your website and set the emails up for you. Then when an interested prospect enters their contact information on your site, they automatically start getting emails from your business.

3. Email newsletters

You should regularly send email newsletters to your client base as well to your prospects.

It’s simply another, easy way to stay in touch.

And prospects NEED to hear from you… they’re basically waiting to be closed.

Email newsletters are, well, news blasts!

And they can be sent alongside that email drip campaign I mentioned earlier.

Newsletters can be sent weekly, monthly, or even bi-monthly—it’s up to you!

Here’s what you can put in them:

• Helpful tips relevant to your product or service
• News about your industry
• A new testimonial about your business
• Announcements about your company

Newsletters should be relevant to who is reading them.

So don’t make it all about you… write about what will help THEM.

If your emails help your customers and prospects, they will stick around and close and buy more from you—I promise!

4. Direct mail

I recommend a 3-postcard drip campaign for leads that don’t close.

These postcards can be similar to the pieces you send to generate leads and interest…as long as they’re customized and say something like:

“Thanks for your interest! I see you reached out to us…”

You need to recognize they’ve already contacted you.

Our marketing consultants can show you excellent examples of these too. (Just call 800-628-1804—their advice and expertise is free!)

Each week (or before each mailing), go through your mailing list to add new leads and also remove those who became customers.

You don’t want to mail someone on something they’ve already done!

5. Online follow-up

Your business can easily harness the genius and power of Google by automatically following up with leads online that don’t close.

This is called “remarketing” or “retargeting” or “Google follow-up advertising”…

And it’s brilliant!

Here’s how it works:

A special code is added to your website. This code is a called a “cookie.” When a prospect visits your website, they are “cookied.”

Now that your prospect has been “cookied,” an incredible thing happens…

I mean REALLY incredible:

Your prospect starts seeing your company’s ads all over the internet!

Countless websites start showing YOUR company’s ad to your prospect after they’ve left your website.

You’ve probably noticed this yourself.

You go to a website, look around, and then leave…

And voilà!

Now you see that company’s ad EVERYWHERE on the internet.

See this PostcardMania ad popping up on the Thesaurus.com website?

That’s online follow-up in action.

That’s what you want!

You want your business to be seen everywhere and NEVER forgotten.

Because people don’t buy from companies they’ve forgotten about.

So we highly recommend online follow-up ads.

In fact, we created a program that specifically delivers direct mail marketing + Google, Facebook, AND Instagram ads. It’s called Everywhere Small Business and only costs pennies per prospect!

It’s pretty amazing!

We even have our own designated Results Manager on staff who helps make sure your campaign gives you what you’re looking for…

Remember what that is?

ROI!

One final thought…

Different people move at different speeds.

Some people (like me) act very quickly. When I see something I want and need and I like the business and feel good about them, I act.

Others need more time to chew on something before they make a decision…

That’s why follow-up is SO important!

You will have leads that close on the first phone call…

But a lot won’t.

So having systems in place to stay in communication with your prospects is VITAL.

Otherwise you’re just losing money on people who would’ve closed if you just hadn’t given up on them.

That’s why we follow-up with prospects, even if it only turns into a couple promotions a year.

Here’s why:

I actually had businesses that we’d been following up with for years—businesses who had never bought anything from us. Finally… years after initially inquiring, they made a purchase. I guarantee that they would’ve NEVER made that eventual purchase if we had given up on reaching out to them.

If you follow-up and follow-up and never give up, you’ll close more leads—that I can guarantee!

If you have questions about what kind of follow-up system is appropriate for your business, call one of my marketing experts at 800-628-1804. The consultation is absolutely FREE! And of course, you can always email me directly at Joy.Gendusa@PostcardMania.com.

Best,

Joy

P.S.  This article was adapted from my book, Postcard Marketing In An Online World. Click the link to download it for FREE!