Archive for the 'emerging business' Category

Top 5 Tips When Creating A Virtual Business

Here's to "Your Virtual Success"!

Perhaps you’re considering creating a business or expanding a current business. As with many businesses, investing in inventory, product development or warehouse space might seem requisite. And perhaps this appears to be a reasonable or even logical approach, borrowing the famous quote from Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come.” After all, your simple business plan projects profits after only a modest startup period. My advice is to think about this again. When creating a new business, it’s highly advantageous to operate in a way that is both conducive to a flexible lifestyle while mitigating downside risk, including ramp up time or significant upfront investment.

Then again, you might be thinking that you can alleviate the risk by securing a bank loan, tapping into your home equity or even attracting venture capital. My advice, once again, is to think about another path, preferably one revolving around the golden rules above. Yes, there are a select few who can beat the traditional small business odds which are often estimated at 5 to 1, where only 20% of new businesses succeeded in the first 3 years. Venture capital odds are surely the worst, where many experts maintain the odds that you will succeed (find VC funding, maintain control of your company and enjoy a positive liquidation event) are about 5,000 to 1. How difficult are these odds? At roughly 5,000 to 1, you would odds comparable to getting struck by lightning.

Bootstrapping your virtual business should be much easier than funding a traditional brick and mortar business. Before opening a traditional storefront, or investing in a physical office, ask yourself if you can work from a home office, or if you can adjust your operations to accommodate a virtual business model. Instead of getting on a plane or train, are you sure a “face to face” Skype conference call wouldn’t suffice? At a cost of about $5 per month, you can simultaneously video conference with multiple people, regardless of their location. Instead of investing up front in capital equipment, can your new business secure orders in advance, or even deposits in advance of delivery?

  1. A short path to the money (limited ramp-up or development time)
  2. No upfront capital
  3. Customer deposits in advance of delivery
  4. Contractor based assistance for delivery
  5. Niche marketing opportunity (it’s much easier to target a vertical than a horizontal)

When thinking about your next venture, think about the Top 5 virtual business startup tips and if possible, find a virtual business model that leverages these for your new or existing business. Try to follow some or all of these.

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Colossal, Exponential, Gargantuan, Humongous Internet Growth – And Then Some

The Internet has experienced colossal  growth over the last decade. Perhaps colossal isn’t sufficiently substantive to describe the growth, if so, you should choose your favorite adjective: enormous, exponential, gargantuan, gigantic, huge, humongous, immense,  mammoth,  or titanic might better suffice, though the latter does have the negative connotation associated with icebergs and boating. Regardless of your preferred adjective, we can agree that the numbers are truly staggering. Here are a few mind blowing stats which were gleaned from the www.royal.pingdom.com website (you have to like that domain name):

  • 107 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010.
  • 2.9 billion – The number of email accounts worldwide.
  • 25% – Share of email accounts that are corporate.
  • 255 million – The number of websites as of December 2010.
  • 21.4 million – Added websites in 2010.
  • 202 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (10/2010).
  • 1.97 billion – Internet users worldwide (6/2010).
  • 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
  • 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
  • 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
  • 2 billion – The number of videos watched per day on YouTube.
  • 35 – Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.
  • 5 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (9/2010).
  • 3+ billion – Photos uploaded per month to Facebook.

Both the growth and sheer size of these numbers represents a new reality, a virtual, interconnected world which will define new rules for marketing and communication, from both personal and business perspectives. The internet has redefined businesses, from giant new players like Google, to small virtual companies like StartUpSelling, Inc. As with all things there are positives and negatives, winners and losers. On the winning side are emerging countries benefiting from information previously unavailable to them, social networking for individuals and business, and new and existing companies embracing an internet based business paradigm. On the losing side are traditional businesses from book stores to publishing companies, from video stores to brick and mortar consumer electronics, and countries imposing censorship restrictions on internet use.

In the near future, however, this titanic explosion of internet use will offer benefits to those who leverage the opportunities. Yes, there are risks here, including privacy issues, inappropriate content for children, security issues and potential viruses. That said, most people would agree that the colossal expansion of the internet offers great potential and an expanded knowledge base. For example, as a quick check to the figures noted above, I went to the web and found another site listing total internet use at 1.966 billion, essentially the same number quoted above. The ability to find germane information at ones fingertips is unprecedented, we are very fortunate to benefit from this innovation. Perhaps we should then refer to the increased internet use as a gargantuan increase, as opposed to a titanic increase, realizing of course, there may be virtual icebergs in cyberspace too.

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ePublishing As A Marketing Vehicle For Startups, Entrepreneurs And Emerging Companies

ePublishing offers startup companies an opportunity for high level marketing impact, yet requires no cash outlay. This should be an attractive formula for most if not all startups, entrepreneurs, home office based businesses, emerging companies or essentially any company tight on cash. Though there is no capital investment needed, it does require the ability to write reasonably well and to invest time and energy in an educational and non-promotional topic. However, for many startups and entrepreneurs, there is often an abundance of knowledge to share, and many actually yearn for a platform from which they may share their new ideas and concepts.

Leading ePublishers don’t allow promotional articles, embedded links or personal rants. Articles must conform to a multitude of specifications to be accepted. The content must be educationally oriented, it must be properly formatted, grammar must be correct and word density in some cases cannot exceed four or five percent for a particular keyword phrase. This emanates from the ePublisher’s desire to eliminate “keyword stuffing”, in a similar manner to Google’s perspective on the same issue when it comes to SEO.

Of course, you may be asking how it will help your start-up to write these articles if they cannot be promotional in nature. The answer lies in the information you can provide, not the actual product, service or solution your company offers. For example, if you sell a better, more durable, longer lasting sweatshirt, you can write an article about the innovative material now available for sweatshirts as opposed to writing an article about why your sweatshirts are better than other sweatshirts. Another example might be a web development company. Instead of writing about why your new company is the best web development company in the world, you can write about technology used in your marketplace, perhaps an article about the advantages of using PHP in website development over an HTML based website design.

The benefits to start-ups can be significant. Startups are often idea rich and cash poor, lacking the capital and marketing budget for a traditional marketing campaign. ePublishing offers the following marketing advantages:

1. Drive web traffic to your new website

2. Improve SEO resulting in better search engine results

3. Provide credible, published content for prospects

4. Provide dynamic content for your website

5. Provide back links to your website

6. Re-purpose blog content (blogs are often a compelling basis for an article)

7. Appear high in search engine rankings when interested parties search for specific content (electronically published articles can often appear on Google page one results for example, eclipsing much more established web site if the content is current and on topic)

ePublishing offers a level playing field for start-up companies seeking to compete with more established firms. You don’t need to be a technical guru to submit an article, you don’t need capital, the user interfaces tend to be easy to use and quality ePublishers offer plenty of guidance and suggestions on writing quality articles. What does your start-up need to get articles published? You need an interesting idea, 250 or more, well written words (though this can vary by publisher) and some patience when starting out with your first few articles. It can take a week or so to find out if your article is accepted, and in my opinion, for start-ups, entrepreneurs and other emerging companies, it is well worth the wait.

For more information, read Your Virtual Success (Career Press) http://www.amazon.com/Your-Virtual-Success-Finding-Profitability/dp/1601631014.  StartUpSelling provides outsourced B2B marketing, sales and lead generation services focusing in the areas of eMarketing, telemarketing, SEO, insurance agency social media marketing and website development. StartUpSelling specializes in innovative entrepreneurial marketing and sales concepts.

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Patience Is A Virtue – And A Good Rule For Web Seminar Marketing

One of my clients has a web seminar scheduled for October 6th.  An emailing was sent to their prospect list yesterday, and as of this morning 80 people have registered for their webinar. Based on prior monthly webinars, I’d estimate that they will have in excess of 150 executive level registrants by their web seminar date next week. Why is this small business client successful with their webinar marketing program when others may fail?

  1. The web seminars are educational – they do not try to sell their services
  2. The topics are current business topics, related to their vertical industry expertise
  3. The guest speakers are subject matter experts, expounding on a variety of challenging issues germane to the target prospect executives

Of course their first few web seminars didn’t attract nearly as many registrants. Over time, however, they have established a strong following. Today, when they reach out to their prospective clients, their name is known, they are respected as a thought leader in their industry and they are able to readily book web meetings and on-site appointments with these prospective clients.

Beyond the messaging, selecting great topics, finding knowledgeable speakers, and respecting email best practices, this small business has exercised patience, taking a long term approach to winning over their prospects. For products, services or solutions that result in revenues of $10,000, $50,000 or $100,000 or more, this is a great approach. Patience is a virtue and seemingly an important aspect of web seminar marketing too.

For more information on web marketing topics, read Your Virtual Success: http://www.amazon.com/Your-Virtual-Success-Finding-Profitability/dp/1601631014

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An Inexpensive Sales & Marketing Approach for Startups and Emerging Companies

How can an entrepreneur find competent, cheap and effective sales and marketing resources? This is a question that many startup companies and emerging companies must ask themselves every day. It is especially true for the bootstrapped, or simply cash strapped entrepreneur. In many cases the founders of these companies might have great development or operational skills, but lack the sales or closing genes necessary to bring in the business. Thus the dilemma, an entrepreneur has a great product, service or solution, but they don’t have the knowhow or sales and marketing team to build a pipeline and convert suspects to prospects, and then to new clients.

Of course, simply stated, the dilemma above actually represents two distinct issues, driving leads into the sales funnel (a marketing function) then qualifying and closing these leads (sales function). There does appear to be an answer to this question, with a new spin on an old methodology, the independent sales agent model. There are now opportunities for entrepreneurs to outsource the lead development and sales process using a virtual sales and marketing approach, thus conserving cash and mitigating startup risk. This model results in a true “reap what you sow” relationship, which emerging companies seem to like. In these cases, even a modest budget might be sufficient to pilot this model.

Why would this new virtual marketing and sales agent model work for a startup, entrepreneurship or cash strapped company? Hiring a great sales person, let’s say his name was Tom, even on a highly leveraged commission plan, with benefits, training and management time would cost at least $5,000 per month for most industries, and this is before any commissions or marketing costs are added. Because of our virtual approach, we were able to provide both the sales capacity AND the marketing for half the cost of a “Tom”. We think it is only possible to do this using a virtual, no overhead, internet based tools approach.

Virtual Sales & Marketing Solutions

Virtual Sales & Marketing Solutions

Though the sales agent is not typically full-time, the results are can be far superior because the management time, reporting, sales skills, marketing and lead generation are all incorporated into one streamlined, cost effective, outsourced solution. This concept may take a while to catch on with some emerging companies, but it is, in many ways, a better approach to the traditional path of securing large loans or a second mortgage, angel funding, or venture capital funding. And there is a hidden bonus, if the salesperson leaves, there is no need for a new hiring process, they are replaced under this model with another sales agent, trained and brought up to speed without cost to the entrepreneur.

This model eliminates the need to find the sales closer that can “do it all”, find and cultivate leads, follow-up on pipeline worthy accounts, provide marketing materials and presentation materials and finally close new business. It also reduces cash flow needs, venture capital or other funding requirements. All of these services can be provided together, at a lower cost than the traditional brick and mortar model. Perhaps it sounds too good to be true, but I think that is because this is a new approach to an old problem. This new approach, leveraging the virtual model, internet tools and an outsourced contractor methodology can deliver better results than the old-fashioned, hire a brand new internal sales and marketing team and hope it works, brick and mortar approach.

For more information, read Your Virtual Success (Career Press) or go to: http://www.startupselling.com. StartUpSelling provides outsourced marketing, sales and lead generation services focusing in the areas of eMarketing, telemarketing, SEO, insurance agency social media marketing and website development. StartUpSelling specializes in innovative entrepreneurial marketing and sales concepts.

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ePublishing – 3,350 views and counting

ePublishing or electronic publishing is one of the many new manifestations of the increasingly pervasive reach of the internet. Though many traditional publsihers may not like this new trend, another threat to established publishers, I for one am very impressed with the model. I’ve now published 50 articles on Ezine, one of the leading ePublishing sites on the net and have seen 3,350 viewers read these articles. Ezine does not allow self promotional articles, nor do they accept rants or raves. Articles must meet a long list of criteria to be published, from beneficial content to grammar and formatting.  Articles are published for free, Ezine earns their fees from PPC ads.

Sometimes the view results of my articles are surprising, for example my top three articles are:

Article Title/Views/Clicks/Click %/Votes/Date Posted

Should You Hire an Insurance Agency Producer Without an Insurance Agency Marketing Program? 352 27 7.7% Rating: Rating: Rating: Rating: Rating: 05/26/2010
Are the Days of Direct Mail Marketing Dead For Insurance Agencies? 301 39 13.0% Rating: Rating: Rating: Rating: Rating: 06/02/2010
How to “Insure” the Success of New Salespeople 242 19 7.9% Rating: Rating: Rating: Rating: rating: 4.5000 03/19/2010

Actually I thought my article on the Prospect Scorecard would be one of my most valuable and popular, however it is currently running in the middle of the pack for views to date. Note that the author interface shown above tracks click through rate (13% was the highest click through rate for these articles) and the number of stars people allocate for voting. I’ve found vertically oriented articles to offer the greatest pull for both me and my clients. StartUpSelling provides marketing services for any B2B company but we’ve found a vertical approach to be most effective for both our own marketing and ePublishing. We now post many articles on behalf of our clients in areas including: legal practices, insurance agents, consultants, training firms, software and technology companies. If you would like to read some of these articles click on the following link:  http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Alan_Blume

To read more about virtual sales and marketing, read Your Virtual Success: www.yourvirtualsuccess.net or go to www.startupselling.com

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Search Engine Optimization and Long Tail Keywords

Over the past year our company embarked upon an SEO experiment. We tested several techniques using numerous keyword phrases to determine how fast we could rise in the organic search engine results (the non advertisement results listed in a Google, Yahoo or Bing search).  One of our primary target markets is insurance agencies, so we selected a dozen long-tail keyword phrases germane to this market. When we began this experiment, we were ranked very low, in some cases as low as page 10 on Google, in other cases we were simply unranked.  Our goal was to rapidly reach page one on Google search results.

We began with a keyword analysis, determining which phrases we deemed most valuable to our marketing services agency and which keyword phrases had less competition. Long-tail keywords are typically three word phrases and more specific than a broad based single keyword. For example, “California Transportation Litigation” would be a good example of a long-tail keyword phrase, whereas “Litigation” would be a very broad keyword. “Insurance Agent Leads” would be another long-tail example while “Insurance” is another example of a broad and seemingly vague keyword.

Some of the long-tail keyword phrases we chose included:

  • Insurance Agency SEO
  • Insurance Agency Leads
  • Trucking Agency Leads
  • Trucking Agency Marketing

As of this writing we are ranked Google page one for all of these long-tail keywords. We currently appear as the #1 entry for the first three long-tail keyword phrases and we appear #2 for trucking agency marketing. Some of these terms are highly focused, with 100 to 200 searches per year; other keyword phrases we selected are searched thousands or tens of thousands of times per year.  We appear on Google page one (and Yahoo for that matter) for many other of our selected long-tail keyword phrases. How long did this take? In almost all cases, Google page one rankings were accomplished in 90 days. We have also seen similar results for many of our B2B clients, which tend to be professional service companies, insurance agencies or B@B technology companies.

How is this accomplished? We approached our SEO experiment using both on page and off page optimization techniques. The on page techniques included the modification of:

  • Page Title
  • Description
  • Keywords
  • H1-H4 Tags
  • Alt Image Tags
  • Keyword Density
  • Blog Integration
  • Dynamic Content

There were many additional on page optimizations used, but the changes noted above are of critical importance.  Off page optimization included ePublishing, directory submissions, link building, blog distribution, and social media marketing. There is almost no limit to the amount of content which can be generated outside of your website, but you have to start somewhere and then continue to invest in your content development. Though it may seem obvious, all of the off page optimization requires a link back to your website. More links is one of the many elements the search engines use when deciding which web sites to display in their organic search listings.

As of this writing, an increasing number of our new clients are arriving from the efforts noted above, with SEO, LinkedIn, ePublishing, and blogging now generating over 25 % of our new business activity. We believe that the list above will soon constitute 50% of the leads generated for our own business, and expect other companies to find a similar result over time. Many of these topics are covered in my recently released book, Your Virtual Success, available online and at all major bookstores.

www.startupselling.com www.alanblume.com www.yourvirtualsuccess.net

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It’s All About Your Close Ratio

Do you track the ratios of your prospects to presentations to proposals to closes? These simple ratios can offer tremendous insights into the health of your sales and marketing engine. Further, they can elucidate specific challenges in your business. For example, let’s say that you offer monthly web seminars which result in 100 registrants per month. Of these 100 registrants, 10 move further down your sales funnel (see blog entry called The Prospect Scorecard) and result in individual presentations (10%). Of these 10 presentations, five request proposals (50% of presentations or 5% of webinar registrants), and are deemed “proposal worthy” through your well defined Prospect Scorecard or other measuring system which your company has in place. Lastly, of these five proposals, two close, or 40% of proposals or 2% of the original 100 webinar registrants.

Now that you’ve established your ratios, are you happy with them? If you are, then you may want to increase webinar registrants, allowing more prospects to cascade down through your funnel. Or, perhaps you think that a 10% conversion rate from webinar registrants to individualized presentations is too low. You would then need to determine what should be done to influence that metric. For example, perhaps your webinars need a more compelling call to action, a special offer to move to an individualized presentation, or you could make it easier for the prospect to meet with you by offering an abbreviated one to one web meeting or conference call. There are actually many things you could try to refine your ratios, of course you have to have these in place to do so.

Your company now has simple and easily measurable metrics for your sales process. Extending these measurements to your marketing engine, in this particular case, can be as simple as measuring where webinar registrants arrived from (LinkedIn or other Social Network, ePublishing, eMail Marketing, Referral, etc.) and then tracking the resulting prospects through the sales funnel mentioned above. Many small businesses fail to measure these key metrics, which is really very simple to accomplish. We track all of these for our own sales and marketing efforts at StartUpSelling, Inc. You can read more about this on our website, or in my recently released book, Your Virtual Success: www.yourvirtualsuccess.net.

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A Small Business Marketing Plan for the Web Centric Marketing Era

Small Business Marketing Plan, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan

Small Business Marketing Plan, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan

What type of marketing plan does your small business create each year? Is it a comprehensive and detailed plan that is 10 or 20 pages long or a more concise one to five pages? Is it part of an annual business plan or a five year strategic plan? Companies approach business planning, budgeting and marketing from a wide variety of perspectives.  For the purposes of this article, we’re going to drill down to a marketing specific plan, then further to a web centric B2B lead generation plan.

There are many marketing related activities which fall under a small business marketing plan umbrella. Some of these (listed alphabetically) include:

  • Association Memberships (Chamber of Commerce, etc.)
  • Blogging
  • Brochures
  • Client Testimonials
  • Club Memberships (Golf, Tennis, Other)
  • Direct Mail
  • eBrochures
  • eMarketing
  • ePublishing
  • Events (for both clients and prospects)
  • Networking Organizations
  • Newsletter
  • On-site Seminars
  • Pay Per Click (Google PPC Campaigns)
  • PR and Client Testimonial Creation
  • Promotional Items
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Social Media Marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn)
  • Telemarketing
  • Trade Shows
  • Traditional Advertising (Magazines, Yellow Pages, Radio, TV)
  • Web Seminars
  • Website
  • White Papers

That’s already a long list, and we’re just getting started. Small businesses can’t tackle all of the activities above, in fact, they should only focus on a few of these each year, and many would agree that they should focus on lead generation oriented activities which will help keep their pipelines full and active. Let’s review some of the better lead generation activities from the list above:

  • Direct Mail
  • eMarketing
  • Pay Per Click (Google PPC Campaigns)
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Social Media Marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn)
  • Telemarketing
  • Traditional Advertising (Magazines, Yellow Pages, Radio, TV)
  • Web Seminars
  • Website

Granted, networking oriented activities can generate leads, though these should be pursued in the normal course of business in a manner most comfortable to the individual salesperson. Thus we are focusing on quantitatively oriented (easily repeatable and highly measurable) lead generation activities. This list is more manageable, but still needs to be culled to ensure proper focus on the respective lead generation activity.  A decade ago, traditional advertising, telemarketing and direct mail might have been the preferred path for most businesses. Today, only one of those activities should remain on our list, and as you will see below, the remaining items are all web marketing centric.

  • eMarketing/Web Seminars
  • Pay Per Click (Google PPC Campaigns)
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Blogging, ePublising
  • Social Media Marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn)
  • Telemarketing (for smaller profile prospects)
  • Website

Our small business marketing list has now been culled to a manageable level. You may have noticed that eMarketing has been paired with web seminars. This is because many small business marketing experts find a higher B2B response rate to eMarketing initiatives when leveraging educationally oriented webinars as the primary call to action. SEO, search engine optimization for Small businesses, results in the organic display of your business website at the top of the search engine rankings (Google, Bing or Yahoo search engine results). You probably noticed that this is now bundled with blogging and ePublishing, since those elements are often necessary to achieve page one search engine results. Organic SEO is a gift that keeps on giving; it does not require fees every time a prospect clicks on your name. PPC, or Pay Per Click ads, appear at the top and side of the Google results, and require that your business pays anywhere from $1 to $5 per click, depending upon the competitiveness of the search term. My recommendations for a B2B lead generation, web centric plan often focuses on the following:

  • eMarketing/Web Seminars
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Blogging, ePublising
  • Social Media Marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn)
  • Website

This is a manageable list for almost any business, and a cost effective outsource if the business lacks the internal expertise to accomplish these tasks.  A professional up to date website is essential for any small business. The website should be optimized for your specific keywords (benefits, workers comp, truck insurance, etc.). Your small business SEO initiative may need to be regionalized or localized (workers compensation Massachusetts).  Social media marketing, a presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. is fast and easy for most businesses, a full blown social media initiative would require a greater investment of time (creating and managing a group, offering content, responding to discussion groups, etc.). Blogging and ePublishing are essential and extremely helpful for most businesses. Fortunately businesses can often leverage their blog content and publish it in well known, online article directories. Lastly, a successful eMarketing and Web Seminar campaign can often yield the best results for small businesses. An ideal series might have 5,000 0r 10,000 targeted prospect emails combined with a monthly webinar. Be wary of email list brokers advertising inexpensive email lists. We’ve seen business lists where the first and last names are merged into one field and many of the emails are info@ or sales@ type emails, a definite problem when it comes to professional eMarketing. EMarketing is both an art and a science, businesses must ensure it is done properly, professionally and obey the CAN-SPAM act.

Web centric small business marketing is now a critical foundation for any small business wishing to grow, your business should be well on the way to implementing these initiatives. That said, don’t attempt to do too many activities at one time, you’re better off doing a few marketing activities really well than accomplishing a dozen in a haphazard manner.

For more information on small business marketing read Your Virtual Success: http://www.amazon.com/Your-Virtual-Success-Finding-Profitability/dp/1601631014

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Should Smaller Agencies Focus on Marketing Plans or Lead Generation Plans?

Is there a difference for small agencies when it comes to a marketing plan vs. a lead gen plan? How much should a small agency invest in marketing vs. lead generation, and which is more effective? Does your agency allocate a percentage of revenues to determine marketing spend each year? Do you have a formal budget or no budget at all? Do you create a formal marketing plan with measurable goals, and if so, what aspect of this plan is allocated toward lead generation? Or are you of the philosophy that it’s the producers’ job to dig up leads, after all, that’s why you pay them commission in the first place.

The answers to these questions can vary greatly by size of agency and type of agency, but here’s my perspective on smaller agencies, which I’ll identify as $5 Million in revenues and below. Most of these types of agencies have limited budget and bandwidth, and many don’t have a VP of Marketing (or a dedicated marketing person of any type). Some of these agencies create a formal marketing plan at the end of each year, and create a budget to accomplish their goals. For example, a $4 Million agency may allocate 1% to 10% of their revenues for marketing, representing a range from $40,000 to $400,000 (these numbers are all over the board with some agencies allocating almost nothing and others allocating more than 10%). This money is likely to be allocated across many purposes. Some of the marketing activities which agency CEO’s recently mentioned include:

  • On site seminars for clients and prospects
  • Event sponsorships
  • Club memberships
  • Telemarketing (in house and outsourced)
  • Association sponsorships
  • Branding and design projects
  • Trade shows
  • Updated Website
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
  • eMarketing & Web Seminars
  • Social Media
  • Newsletter
  • Blogging & ePublishing
  • Printed materials

Is there a logical order for all of the above “marketing initiatives”? How can a agency determine the relative importance of each of these? Should the typical small agency focus on an overall marketing strategy or a lead generation specific strategy? For small agencies I typically recommend a one page marketing plan, and that this marketing plan should be lead generation centric. Small agencies need to be able to change direction quickly, they need to be fleet footed and outmaneuver competition, including much larger organizations with bigger budgets and greater resources. Thus, a marketing plan created in the 4th quarter of last year, may need to be changed in the 2nd quarter of this year. The best way to do this is a one page, bulleted marketing plan. For example:

  • Build targeted 3,000 prospect list with emails
  • Invite prospects to a monthly webinar with a goal of 30 registrants
  • Sales team to call all multiple opens and click throughs, registrants and attendees
  • Meet with 12 prospects per month from this lead gen effort, proposals to 4 and close 2
  • Cost for this program over 12 months: Approximately $25,000

Your marketing plan may continue on with a revised website and SEO project:

  • Update look & feel of website
  • Create Blog and integrate into website
  • LinkedIn, Facebook and Social Media Profiles
  • Refine SEO (Search Engine Optimization – your agency is organically listed at the top ff Google, Bing & Yahoo rankings)
  • Post articles in online article directories (ePublish)
  • Cost for this program over 3 months: Approximately $6,000

You may add a telemarketing project as a standalone, or to supplement the activities above:

  • 10 hours of calls per week yielding 225 outbound calls
  • 4 appointment quality leads per week
  • 2 appointments that move to quotations
  • 1 close on average per week
  • Cost for this program over 12 months: Approximately $24,000

If all of the marketing activities above were accomplished in a period of one year, perhaps your agency allocated $55,000 toward lead generation centric marketing.  If your agency is $4 Million in revenues, the lead generation plan above represents about 1.5% of your revenues. It’s important to measure the revenue generated by this investment. This can be done easily on a simple spreadsheet, comparing opportunities with closes. Ultimately you will be able to create a sales funnel with ratios including: Suspects, prospects, meetings, quotations, closes.

Leveraged in conjunction with a strong referral oriented lead generation program, this type of marketing is often the most effective for smaller agencies. If agencies decide to outsource this type of marketing, it’s easy to change direction quickly, moving from telemarketing to web seminar marketing for example. With limited funds and resources available, agencies need to make every marketing dollar count, and it’s important to have a simple and malleable marketing plan to help grow your premiums.

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