I drove past a dry cleaners yesterday and I just loved what I saw so I wanted to share this with you.

Take a moment to think about all the services dry cleaners offer. They dry clean clothes, wedding dresses, clean and iron shirts, duvets, curtains and the list goes on.

When you go past a dry cleaning shop or go into one, most of them have a menu clearly displayed showing all the services they offer and the pricing.

So what?

This particular dry cleaners had all of the above in place PLUS he had one of those stands outside that singled out a SPECIFIC service that he offered – curtain cleaning.

He didn’t just stop there. The sign didn’t just say “Curtain Cleaning Available” etc.

In big bold letters he was telling all who walked or drove past the shop that he offered a service where they would come and take down your curtains for free, take them away to clean them, and then come back and hang them up for you!

Genius!

What a brilliant example of niche marketing and adding some extra free value (note, no mention of a discount in trying to secure a sale) added service in order to make more sales.

I bet when his team go round to the house to complete the task it doesn’t stop there. They probably come away with various suits and coats that the customer has been meaning to get cleaned for ages…

So what do you do to secure those extra sales?

I know I don’t!

Whilst it’s great taking things on, helping people out, in work personal and business life, it’s when life throws you a few unexpected curved balls that the cracks start to appear and you know you’re in trouble!

For me the cracks started to appear before the school holidays kicked in. Both my girls caught a horrible sickness bug, the youngest first, then the eldest and then me! Two weeks of sleep deprivation, illness, end of term madness and a home and a business to run! Great!

I looked forward to the school holidays with relish! I’d been my usual organised self and had sorted out play days, work days, holiday with military precision. But I still feel like I’m on a treadmill and the odd ball is dropping….

So, it’s definitely time to take stock and when I treated myself to a well deserved spa day at The Grove in Chandlers Cross on Wednesday, I came out a different woman!

OK, my 6 year old daughter couldn’t see any difference – I think she’s got external make overs confused with internal ones – I need to work on this with her!

Having a day to MYSELF though, gave me time to reassess a lot of things and I know I have to make changes in both my personal and business life. This year has been totally amazing for me in so many ways but I know if I’m going to continue to go from strength to strength, I definitely need more balance (again!) and more downtime for me, on my own, as a person!

Onwards and upwards!

I’m beginning to see a trend. A number of my clients are choosing not to have business cards printed but are preferring to have postcards printed instead.

And for some of their businesses, I would have to agree that getting 3 or 4 postcards printed to promote niche areas of their business, does make a lot of sense. You get far more information on a postcard and they are definitely an effective marketing tool, particularly if you are promoting a squeeze page (stand alone, lead capture web page) rather than just your brochure website.

I remember when I first started out in business 14 years ago, having a well designed, good quality business card was absolutely essential. I used to love collecting other people’s business cards and I’d have files of the things in my office (and OK, quite a number in boxes and drawers too!)

However, nowadays, I’m religious in making sure I transfer the data from any business cards I collect, and input them straight onto my database. I’m sure I’m not alone in doing this and the dusty files of business cards no longer have a place in my office.

Typing this I’m having a nostalgic hankering after those cards…

Anyway, getting back to my point – what are your thoughts on the humble business card? Does it have as much value as it used to or are postcards promoting niche areas of your business, far more effective?

Please email me louise@louiseheasman.com or comment on my blog.

Thank you!

Like many parents (and children!) I’m really looking forward to a break with routine of doing the school run and I can’t wait for the school holidays to start!

Whilst I’ll be juggling work and play (lots of play!!!) over the next 6 weeks, it suddenly dawned on me that when school starts in September, both my beautiful daughters will be at the same school so I won’t be needing to do the mad, time pressurized run between two schools!

Just this simple thing will mean that I immediately free up a very precious 2.5 hours worth of my time every week!!!!

I liken this a lottery win! Or an unexpected cash windfall and I really don’t want to waste or squander this very precious commodity!

So I’d love to know your thoughts and ideas on what a busy working wife and mum should do with those precious 2.5 hours! Please email or post suggestions (clean ones will only be published, thank you!) on my blog.

I’d also love to hear if you’re also affected by a Windfall Of Time when the new school term starts too and how you are going to use the time. Please don’t just let this valuable time get eaten up into the busyness of life – do something with it!!!

Following my recent posts about the dilemma and etiquette of automating your marketing whilst the solo-preneur takes a well deserved holiday, I thought I’d share a few practical ideas with you as to how this could work for your business and still be in line with your values about respecting your connections.

The last thing any business owner wants to become known for is being a marketing spammer! Equally the thought of coming back from a well deserved break to go through a famine period of leads ands sales isn’t an attractive proposition either.

We need to strike a balance!

1. Blogging

I think blogging is a fantastic business building tool. It can definitely play a huge role in helping to generate new sales enquiries, convert more prospects into sales and blogging regularly goes a long way in encouraging existing clients and customers to buy more from you.

So whilst this post isn’t about how to blog etc (I’ll leave that for another time!) you can use your blog to keep your connections informed whilst you are away.

I use (and love!) Wordpress and you can create blog posts way in advance and set them to be published when you want them to be. So if you’re going away for a couple of weeks you could post something to that effect, explain that a trickle of blog posts will be published whilst you are away (each with a brief message at the bottom explaining that you are away and you will ‘respond’ when you get back etc)

Each blog post (and it doesn’t have to be a lot – maybe 3 or 4 over a 2 week period?) should contain some great nuggets of information so your readers feel they are still connected with you and that you’re providing great value to them even if you aren’t around!

2. Newsletters

Similarly to blogging, newsletters or email blast are a great way to reaching out to your database and again you can set communications up to be published whilst you are away if you use software like Constant Contact to manage your database.

Sharing news, quality information, special offers, future promotions etc will help to keep your sales pipeline warm, make some sales whilst you are away and generate new sales leads for you to come back to.

3. Squeeze Pages (stand alone, lead capture web pages)

Squeeze pages are great at helping you to generate high quality sales leads (you can also make sales directly through them online too if you choose to) whilst you are away.

You can promote your squeeze pages whilst you are away through your newsletters or email blasts, your blog, through social media, or by sending  postcards in the ‘old fashioned’ post!

By enticing sales prospects to your squeeze pages by using a compelling freebie (an ethical bribe) such as access to a free course or e-book or content rich report or a free sample of something, you will have a steady stream of prospects to follow up upon your return.

When you set up squeeze pages you need to use autoresponders (I explain what they are and how they work, how to use them etc in my sales lead generation programme) and again, you set these up with whatever wording you choose, so if you want to mention that you’ll be in touch on a certain date, this is easily done.

What I love about squeeze pages is that you can certainly use them to generate sales online whilst you are away but if you haven’t got anything set up to sell online, you can still use them to make your life a lot easier for you when you get back.

For instance, if you need to fill a workshop or an event, half your work could be done for you whilst you are away if you plan and set up your squeeze page well.

4. Automate Your Social Media

Now it’s this topic that seems a little thorny for most solo-preneurs! However, if you keep in line with your values of integrity, respect and open communication, is there really a problem?

I recently conducted an experiment where I took a 2 week break from all forms of social media and it resulted in a drop in traffic to my web pages of 67% – that’s a serious loss of sales and sales leads…

So I hope I don’t need to convince you any more! Using a bit of automation whilst you are away to promote your blog posts and your squeeze pages will help you to keep that pipeline flowing.

My preferred tool for automation is Social Oomph so you may want to check that out.

5. Reward Your Connections With A Special Offer!

And I don’t mean a discount! If you offer a discount you earn less money and it’s proven that people nowadays don’t really value the discount – so this definitely isn’t a great strategy!

On the other hand what could you offer to prospective clients and customers that wouldn’t either cost you anything or very little? Take time to think creatively about this one.

If you provide a service, you must have lots of material (it goes without saying it has to be good!) hanging around that may or may not be gathering dust! Bundle it up, package it up and offer it as a bonus for people booking you within a certain time period. You can promote this whilst you are away through your schedule emails, newsletters, squeeze pages, automated messages delivered through social media – getting the idea???!!!

If you are in the retail industry, add extra ‘things’ as your bonus, don’t discount. The extra ‘thing’ needed be what the person is buying, it could be a related item which is lower in cost for you to give away.

So hopefully this has triggered a few ideas for you on how to keep your business open whilst you take that well deserved break! The last thing any business owner wants to come back to is the stress of not having either made sales whilst they’ve been away and/or an empty diary or list of sales prospects.

If you want to find out more about squeeze pages, how to set them up and use them etc, then take a look at one of my squeeze pages which gives you access to a free 7 part marketing series (lots of good content there I promise!) and once you’ve given me your name and email address you’ll automatically receive details about my very low cost programme!

www.salesleadgenerationtechniques.com

Or let’s look at this another way, would you like to see an increase of 67% in visitors to your website?

Well over the last couple of weeks I’ve resisted all forms of social media – no Blogging, Twitter, Facebook or Linked In…

All for love of my art!

I’ve only been active in Social Media for the last 12 months or so. Previously, most of my business has been generated through word of mouth, PR, networking, direct mail or advertising. This has bought me great business but when I embraced social media as part of my marketing toolkit, albeit reluctantly being  a bit of a technophobe, I recognised its power more or less immediately.

So to take a break from it to ‘prove’ its power in generating quality sales leads and sales for my business was a big deal.

And here I am 2 weeks later, 67% down on the usual hits to my website that I’d been experiencing when blogging 2/3 times a week, tweeting most days etc.

As a direct consequence of this, sales leads coming from my website and through my squeeze pages are also down dramatically, at least a 1/3 from what they usually are.

That’s a serious loss of potential business.

My loss though has been diminished in the fact that I’ve been ‘lucky’ in that I have squeeze pages up and running and these have been working for me, so I’ve still been able to see a good flow of sales enquiries coming through. However, I know there could have been more leads coming through my squeeze pages if I’d been my usual active self in helping to drive traffic to these stand alone, lead capture, web pages, by using social media.

Squeeze pages have definitely been my saving grace in the last 2 weeks but the whole experiment has been a really useful exercise and I am really pleased to have proven that the time I spend on social media has been a good investment since it does have a dramatic effect in generating new sales enquiries.

The holiday season is fast approaching and if you are looking to ensure the time you take off doesn’t result in another ‘famine’ period for your business, you might want to get a couple of squeeze pages up before you go and automate some of your social media so you are still driving traffic to your web pages, whilst you enjoy a break!

There are lots of ways to do this without losing your human touch and I’ve share some tips with you on this in my next blog post tomorrow.

The summer season is upon us (at long last I hear everyone say!) and already it’s a little quieter out there as people jet off on holidays before the schools break up.

For business owners it’s always a bit of a juggle this time year; wanting to get away to recharge those batteries, but also at the same time, wanting to make sure your business keeps on working whilst you are away.

And for the parents among us, we’ve got 6+ weeks to juggle; trying to get the balance right of having some extra time off with the kids whilst keeping your business going.

If you have a team of people, it is slightly easier as the business isn’t solely dependent on you. But what if you don’t have a team to rely on? How are you going to keep your business open whilst you are taking time off?

This is where automating some of your marketing processes can really help you. And this is what I’m going to be focussing on over the next couple of weeks to help my clients and followers as much as I can in passing on some useful tips, techniques and ideas.

Before we get cracking though I’d be interested in your feedback. What are you likes and dislikes about automated marketing?

The reason I’m asking is that I regularly get feedback from business owners saying they hate automated marketing, like scheduled promotional tweets etc but on the other hand they really want to keep those sales enquiries coming through at the same time – and you can’t have it both ways!

I’ve got some ideas I’d like to share with you over the next couple of weeks but I’d also love to hear your thoughts and ideas too, so please do comment on this blog post and/or email through my contact page.

Being on the speakers circuit, giving regular talks and presentations about your niche areas or even the occasional one-off talk to a group of local people, there’s no denying that any speaking opportunity can provide you with an excellent source of warm sales enquiries.

Nowadays, you can also get yourself on the virtual speakers circuit, presenting to a wider audience (maybe global?) through conference calls (teleseminars) and/or webinars.

If public speaking isn’t currently in your marketing mix, you certainly should consider it as it’s an excellent lead generator.

There’s definitely an art to making the opportunity successful so when you get a speaking gig, make sure as well as preparing your talk, you prepare your marketing plan too.

There are occasions though, when you know you’ve given a brilliant presentation (you get a standing ovation even) yet at the end, you feel really flat because it hasn’t resulted in any real leads or sales.

Here are a few tips to help you make the most out of every speaking engagement you have.

1)  Get a table at the ‘back of the room’

Well OK, it doesn’t have to be at the back of the room, anywhere will do! Dress the table well with your branding. Display business cards, leaflets, postcards, books. Also pop up banner stands are really effective as they help to draw in your crowd.

Getting people to your stand to meet you (maybe to buy a signed copy of your book) will give you the opportunity to have personal conversations where you could up-sell higher-end coaching or training programmes.

Try to devise a way to capture details of people who visit your stand. Maybe a raffle, or prize drawer of some kind.

2)  Hand outs

Hand-outs are great provided they really add value to the person. People may keep hand-outs for a long time so they act as a constant reminder of who you are and what you do. So make sure you pay attention to what you will be giving out to your audience as this simple thing could help you in your client conversion rate.

3)  What are you going to be selling?

What is your goal? Are you selling your book, a coaching or training programme or your time?

I’m a fan of using the classic sales funnel when it comes to making the most out of public speaking events. Focusing on generating high volume, low ticket price sales, gives you the opportunity of funneling lots of people into your sales pipeline at a low entry price so you can then develop the relationship with them later on to up-sell higher ticket priced products or services.

So having a book, or an e-book, a short e-course (delivered through a series of autoresponders, or a subscription service), is always a good low-priced entry point for people. Anything around the £10-£30 mark goes well at events.

The important thing is to have something to sell!

4) Have a FREEBIE offer!

During your presentation, on your hand-outs, when speaking to people, encourage people to visit one (or more!) of your stand alone lead capture pages to obtain something that is highly relevant to your talk, and of considerable value, information-wise.

This is a subtle technique that should be used in conjunction with your hand-out notes. Don’t make the mistake I see some presenters make by giving away too much valuable information for free in their hand-out notes. By all means, give out great quality hand-out notes but ensure there are lots of prompts to direct people to a stand alone, lead capture web page to get a golden nugget of some sort. You immediately start to build a list of high quality sales leads. They get your free, valuable freebie and you get their contact details.

I call this a no leak strategy! You may or may not have captured people’s details at the event. You may or may not have sold anything to them, but this way you are making sure you are offering as many ways as possible to draw prospects into your pipeline.

I would also recommend that you make your thank you page, go through to a sales page, for one of your low ticket priced products or services. And of course, do all this with autoresponders so everything is fully automated.

Again, this subtle technique will help you to generate more sales. People at the event may or may not have had the opportunity to buy from your stand, but this no leakage tip, will help you to mop up those straggling sales that are out there!

For more ideas on how to implement these tips you may find my FREE 7-part Sales Lead Generation series of interest. To register for FREE, go to http://www.salesleadgenerationtechniques.com

Using PR as part of your marketing strategy is another excellent way to generate sales leads.

In addition to bringing in more sales enquiries, I love the fact that (good!) PR can really help you to create or maintain brand awareness which helps you to convert more sales and make more sales. So I think it’s a definite marketing tool to consider for any business as part of an overall marketing plan.

PR campaigns can be expensive to run and there’s a risk element involved too – will you get the expected publicity and exposure? But the return on investment can be substantial.

I love including PR in a marketing plan as it can be implemented with NO COST at all to the business owner, other than time!

I’ll be sharing some of those techniques in my Sales Lead Generation Technique Programme and I’ll be bringing in some PR guru’s and experts on how to generate your own PR at no or very little cost…..

However, in this article whether you decide to employ a professional or do it yourself, here are my tips on how to make your PR campaign even more successful! My tips are based on a PR campaign that has the goal of generating more sales leads for the business. So, you won’t be surprised to learn that it involves using a stand alone lead capture web page…..

I shall use Parenting Coaches as the profession for this particular example.

Step 1 – Identify a niche

For some of you reading this, you may be thinking that the Parenting Coach is already a niche, as their clients want support, help and guidance in their parenting, and to a certain extent that’s right. But when it comes to generating PR, we can get even more specific, so how about creating a press release all about managing toddler tantrums or supporting your teenager through exams or bringing up children brimming with confidence etc etc.

You get the picture. By focussing your attention to a specific area of your business, within a niche area of your market, is going to help you get publicity.

Step 2 – Local coverage, National, global or all three?!

Using the same example of Parenting Coaches, you may be working with clients, on a one to one basis, in a specific geographical area so local PR would certainly support your sales leads generation initiative and it’s quite easy to generate good quality, local PR, providing you have a newsworthy and compelling story to sell.

However, don’t discount National or global PR. If you have a sales offer about using your services (or accessing your information….), from the other side of the country or world, then don’t dismiss this opportunity.

With today’s technology it’s easy to work with clients by ‘phone, Skype, run group sessions via conference call or webinar or even drip feed people your course or expertise via an automatic email (an autoresponder). And this could be written copy, audio or video! The possibilities of taking your expertise out to a wider world are endless! And with social media combined with the power of PR, you could really establish yourself as a world expert!

Step 3 – Don’t make this mistake!

So you’ve got your press release all ready to go and a long list of people to send it to and you’re feeling confident you’re going to get publications (online, offline, radio, TV etc) taking you up on your story. And you are feeling really excited about how many enquiries this campaign will bring you…

And you should be feeling proud, excited and confident! You have a great story to share with the wider world!

But don’t waste this opportunity by ONLY giving your brochure website details out!

People may feel inspired to look up your website as a result or reading, listening or seeing your story but how will you be able to capture their details?

Not all visitors to your website will (or can!) purchase something from. These are hot enquiries, nevertheless and need to be captured through a stand alone, lead capture, web page. Once you’ve captured their details via a stand alone web page, you have plenty of opportunity to direct them to your brochure website and the various sales offers you want to promote.

Using an opt in box on your brochure website isn’t going to have the same impact; There are far too many distracting links so you won’t generate nearly as many sales leads as directing them to a stand alone, lead capture web page. It’s a FACT!

So make sure you have a compelling, relevant, ethical bribe to entice the visitor to your squeeze page, to share their information with you. This way you build a qualified list of sales prospects, all interested in that specific issue (toddler tantrums, building confidence, exam nerves etc) so you can market your services to them, either sooner (via an information based, automated sales offer) or later (you or someone on your team, follows up individually), the choice is yours.

By applying this technique to your PR campaigns you really will generate far more sales leads.

To get more information on how to do this, please check out my link below which gives you access to my free 7 part strategy series, along with details of my programme once you register your details….

www.salesleadgenerationtechniques.com

Placing adverts in good quality, highly targeted publications can be an excellent way of generating sales leads.

This applies to physical publications like local or national magazines, pamphlets etc as well as online vehicles like websites, online directories, social media.

Clearly, identifying the most appropriate advertising vehicle is critical for success and once you’ve selected the right advertising vehicle for you and your market, the next step is how to make the advert as effective as possible; generating as many high quality sales leads as possible.

I’m going to use an accountancy firm as my example as they advertise their services at pretty much every level, from local to national, online and offline.

Step 1 – Identify a niche area of the business you wish to promote

Make sure the advert is specific about one area of your business as you’ll appeal directly to that market and have more success in generating quality sales leads.

If you try and list all your services in an advert it won’t draw as much attention unless you are advertising to create brand awareness, which is a different topic. I’m focussing on generating targeted sales leads from a specific advert and in order to do this, you need to focus on a niche area of your business.

Which product or service will you choose? In this example it could be payroll services, VAT returns OR tax returns (we’re breaking down the niche areas!) or specific tax efficiency related advice.

Step 2 – Make sure you’re advert looks good!

This should go without saying, yet it’s amazing to still see really badly designed adverts out there and there’s absolutely no reason why this should be, regardless of your budget!

Of course, you could design the advert yourself, or outsource it to a lower cost option like www.99designs.com or to a design student (I like www.studentgems.com) or take it to your favourite graphic designer and have a totally professional job done (I have a team of designers I can recommend if you need one!). In this instance I would always recommend you get the template for your design so you can reduce your costs for future ad campaigns

Step 3 – Good copy!

Make sure your advert copy appeals to the reader. That means making it clear what having the product or service means for your prospective customer. Avoid listing all the features the product or service offers.

What would it mean to your potential client if they outsourced their payroll to you? It would save them time, avoid mistakes, save them money, the business can focus their time and attention selling what they sell! etc. Appeal to the customer, what’s in it for them? They aren’t particularly bothered at this stage whether you’ve got the latest, whizzy software or whether you have an air-conditioned meeting room!

Step 4 – Get people who are interested in your offering TO RAISE THEIR HAND!

How do you do this? Well, just listing your website address and ‘phone number won’t necessarily mean you’ll be inundated with enquiries. You want the reader of the advert (someone who is specifically interested in the service) to be compelled into taking action and this is where the beauty of directing the sales prospect to a stand alone lead capture page, comes in!

On the advert, shout about the fact you have some information on this area available for FREE and in order to obtain that information they have to go directly to a stand alone web page. This is really important. For maximum impact, to generate the most sales leads from your advert (you can easily measure the success of your advert with this technique too), you need to take them to a solitary web page which has no other distractions – it’s sole function is to give that valuable information (also known as an ‘ethical bribe’) in exchange for their contact details. By the way, there is an art to deciding which ‘ethical bribe’ you choose to offer.

Step 5 – Make sure you have a follow up system!

Again, this may sound obvious however, when I’m working with clients, often the main reason they aren’t generating the number of sales they should be doing is because there’s no follow through system which means whilst there’s a lovely supply of sales leads, nobody is converting them!

So, if advertising is one of your favourite marketing vehicles, tweaking your strategy slightly with my tips above, may result in you achieving bigger and better results, IE generating more sales leads!

This is just one example of how I would integrate a stand alone lead capture page into a marketing campaign. To find out more information, I have created a free 7 part strategy series which you can access by going to:

www.salesleadgenerationtechniques.com