Here’s a four step approach that I generally implement for private clients who need a sudden, urgent rush of qualified enquiries they can quickly convert into sales.
Use this process to fill up your pipeline with qualified enquires, or whenever you need a sudden boost of extra sales… and the good news is that you can do this as often as you want.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but for this exercise you’re going to forget all about your existing website. You’re going to create a new standalone web page (lead page) that doesn’t even link to your main website.
And here are the four steps…
Step 1, day 1) Choose a specific product or service and come up with an ‘angle’…
Rather than just running a general promotion for everything your company offers, you need to choose a specific product or service.
Secondly, you need to create a reason for the promotion. Do you have sudden spare capacity and can take on a few extra clients? Are you running a seasonal promotion? Are you launching a brand new service?
Brainstorm a reason for the promotion – it needs to feel ‘special’ and ‘urgent’ for this process to work well for you.
Step 2, day 2) Create a Lead Page for a specific product or service…
The lead page should talk about the best benefits of the product or service you’re offering, and of course explain the reason you brainstormed in step (1).
Remember, the sole purpose of a lead page is not to sell the product but to generate a sales lead or enquiry.
Make sure you follow the principles of effective lead page design – in particular it should really emphasize the reason you brainstormed in step 1.
If you don’t know how to create a lead page make sure you’re signed up to my blog, because I’ve got a lot to share with you on the topic of effective lead page design.
One other quick comment—I normally recommend setting up AB tests, to optimise your conversion rates.
However for this super-quick promotion you don’t need to do this yet.
I’ll talk more about AB testing in a moment but for now, your focus is on the next step…
Step 3, day 3-7) Aggressively promote the lead page!
First of all, forget about Google and the other search engines!
We want much faster results than that.
For near instant response, use one or more of the following traffic tactics to promote your new lead page…
- E-Mail your existing subscriber list. Segment as necessary, so you only email subscribers who are suitable for the promotion. For example, those who are tagged as having previously shown an interest in the product or service you’re offering.
- Promote the lead page link on your social media channels. As always, make the reason you brainstormed in step 1 the ‘star’ of your promotion, to create a sense of urgency.
- Form strategic alliances— ask other companies who sells to the same type of customer or client as you (i.e. who sells a complementary product or service – not a direct competitor!) to send an email promotion to their list – with a link to your lead page.
- Send direct mail — run in-house direct mail to your own subscriber list if you have their postal addresses. Also look to buy or rent a database of prospects you can mail your offer to. Your letter/postcard should directly offer the product or service and feature a call to action. It should also contain the web address to your lead page – but NOT your main company web address.
- Hire an outbound telesales team to walk prospects onto the lead page.
- Consider running Google and Facebook PPC Ads… and direct the adverts on to your lead page (again do not direct ads to your company homepage.)
- Plus whatever tactics have worked well for you in the past… but remember to focus on promoting your lead pages, making the reason from step (1) the star of your promotion.
If you can do some or even better all of the above promotions, you should almost immediately get some enquiries.
So of course the next step is to…
Step 4, ongoing) Manually follow up the sales-leads who submit their details…
The standard advice for lead pages is to write a series of emails, which are automatically ‘drip fed’ to whoever submits their email via a lead page.
However, for this 7-day exercise you’re not looking to build a relationship, you’re looking to sell your product or service… which is why you came up with a special ‘reason’ in step one.
Once you get an enquiry then – hopefully I’m stating the obvious – but you simply need to relentlessly follow up with that enquiry until they either tell you they’re not interested, changed their mind… or hopefully just buy from you!
It’s a simple strategy, but it works tremendously well, especially for any business that sells to other businesses. (B2B).
I’ve used the above system to generate lots of sales-leads in less than seven days — and then gone on to sell to a high percentage of them.
The only caveat to all of the above is if you sell a very high value or complex product or service that has a long lead time.
In that case it’s unlikely you won’t be closing any deals within the next 7 days, but you will at least fill up your pipeline with new potential customers and clients.
Beyond the Next Seven Days…
Once you’ve dealt with the initial rush of enquiries the above process will generate, you can then start to optimise and refine your new lead page campaign.
First of all…
Go Evergreen… or Offline?
If the ‘reason’ which you brainstormed in step (1) above was time-sensitive, then you may need to modify the lead page to make it more ‘evergreen’.
Instead of talking about a specific deadline date when the promotion ends, you could change it to be an ongoing promotion with less urgency.
Another option is to simply take the lead page offline – and then relaunch it again at an appropriate time in future.
For example, if you create a lead page that talks about how a couple of clients cancelled unexpectedly and have created a few slots in your busy schedule which are now available to the first two people who request them – you couldn’t leave that online perpetually.
However you could take it offline – and then relaunch it when you do next have some slots available.
Or another example – one of my other companies (which I co-own) sells wind turbines, and there are frequently lots of renewable energy industry deadlines and date dependent opportunities which we can take advantage of.
Once a deadline passes, we simply stop promoting the lead page until the next deadline is looming again.
The next thing you can look to do is…
Create an Autoresponder Series
Use an email marketing service to add an autoresponder sequence to your lead page. That way, when new enquirers sign up they get automatically nurtured on an ongoing basis.
You can use your autoresponder email series to try and close the deal, or at the very least get your prospect closer to the finishing line so when you or your sales team call the prospect they’re far more informed about what you’re offering.
In the medium to long term an autoresponder series can turn relative strangers into raving fans and loyal customers.
Run AB and Multi-variate Tests
If your lead page software supports it, start running AB (split) and multi-variate tests, in an ongoing effort to increase the conversion rate of your page.
Schedule Your Next 7-Day Enquiry Generation Sprint
If you do the above four steps, your Internet Marketing will produce substantial results — results which are then dependent on only one thing…. your customers desire for your product or service…. and that can be directly influenced by your sales copy anyway!
Schedule a start date in your diary and give the above ‘7 day sprint’ a try.
Let me know what happens – email me at ed@edrivis.com with the results!
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