Seven (More) Cool Marketing Tips To Help You Reel In Clients

by Mark Satterfield, author of “The One Week Marketing Plan: The Set It & Forget It Approach for Quickly Growing Your Business“

Once you get a taste of how effective the One Week Marketing Plan can be, you’ll want to continue boosting your marketing efforts. I recommend a number of “strategic boosts” that are low cost and can also be deployed quickly — usually within four to eight hours.

After you’ve implemented the One Week Marketing Plan, try one new tactic every month. Read on to learn more:

1. Be “social” (in a smart way).

These days social media sites like Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn are becoming more and more like search engines. People use them to search for information, not just to connect with others.

You need to optimize your pages to attract the right kind of prospects and hold their interest.

The most important thing you can do to optimize your social media home pages is to make sure your bio or profile includes the keywords or phrases that potential customers would use if they were searching for the products or services you offer. You already have your keywords prepared since you’ll most likely use the same ones as you used for your free report.

The best way to use your social media posts is to drive people to your blog. As a result of the blog, people engage with you. So, when you post on social media, you might quote from your latest blog post, tease the tips or advice you’ve provided in the blog, show how your blog answers a question they might have, and so on. And once you’ve optimized your social media pages, you’ll want to post regularly. You can automate this process by using Hootsuite, which allows you to import your social media profiles and then schedule posts.

2. Tweet about it.

Twitter is one of the most social of the social media platforms, so this little bit of effort will go a long way. Because Twitter moves very fast, you can get immediate attention, but in order to have a sustained presence on Twitter, you’ve got to commit to tweeting multiple times a day.

So, let’s say you’re an accountant who wants to drive your Twitter followers to your latest blog post titled “Five Surprising Ways to Save on Your Taxes.” You might tweet out a question to tease the blog, e.g., “Which of these tax-saving ideas would save YOU the most money?” Then, use Bitly, a website that will take your URL and make it shorter, to include a link to your blog. You can also get creative and include quotes or tips from your blog; just be sure to stay within the 140-character limit.

In addition to coming up with your own tweets, be sure to take advantage of the culture of ‘retweeting.’ Retweeting simply means resending a tweet that you received from someone else to your own list of followers. Why is retweeting and replying directly to those who retweet your messages important? It’s a simple and effective way to build engagement with your connections.

3. Start a blog.

Blogging can be a valuable way to establish yourself as a thought leader. Each time you publish a post, people searching for any keywords it contains will be drawn to your site, where they may sign up for your email list and buy your products or services.

First, successful blogging is all about offering value to your readers. It doesn’t matter how flashy or funny or well-written your posts are if they don’t provide useful information or answer readers’ questions. That said, consistently creating compelling content (say that three times quickly!) is a challenge for a lot of bloggers. So that you don’t find yourself facing blogger’s block, it’s smart to have a broad understanding of what readers generally find interesting.

I suggest making a list of posts you want to publish so that you can work on them when inspiration strikes (and so that you can have a lot of content in the can for a rainy day!). Be sure to keep a constantly evolving record of any new ideas that come to you. I use a program called ‘Evernote’ that enables me to keep all of my ideas readily available.

Blogging makes it easy for readers to pass along interesting or controversial posts to their friends, fans, circles, and followers. I recently acquired a major client all the way from Australia because of a blog post. And my dentist says she gets a new patient for every few blogs she posts — and those are only a few examples. So yes, the time, thought, and energy you put into strategic blogging can have an incredibly positive ROI for your business. So start a blog now!

3. Create a video (and promote it via YouTube).

Study after study shows video is more effective than text in terms of SEO, lead generation, attracting prospects to your website, keeping them engaged while they are there, and ultimately converting them into customers. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. A simple, “talking head”-style video where you tell viewers what you’ve got, why they need it, and what you want them to do next will do just fine. If you don’t want to appear on camera, you might create a narrated text video. All you have to do is create a series of slides using either PowerPoint or Keynote (for Mac users) and record a narration.

Once you’ve made your video, a great way to get viewers is to create video replies on YouTube. A video reply is where you use your video as a comment on someone else’s video. The trick to making this work is to find videos that relate to yours. In other words, would people watching these other videos also be interested in your video? If so, you will want to video reply to them. Start by searching under your keyword phrase to find appropriate videos to reply to. Videos with tens of thousands of views work well. Those that have hundreds of thousands of views also have a lot of significant competition.

4. Write a killer press release.

It may seem ironic, but the biggest mistake most business owners make with a press release is that they focus it on what they want to communicate about their business and their products. However, when you’re pitching the media, the reality is that they don’t care about your book, your business, or your free report. The media wants story ideas that will get people to watch or listen to their show, buy their paper or magazine, or visit their website.

Thus, the trick to getting lots of media attention is to position what your business does in a way that appeals to the specific audience that the media outlet is trying to reach. So, when it comes time to write your press release, you might tie in to a current event, connect to a holiday, provide how-to tips, and so on. Creativity is key.

A great example of a successful press release is one that was sent out by It’s Just Lunch, the dating company. The release headline was ‘Singles Provide Chemistry Lesson in New Dating Survey.’ Their hook is that they finally discovered what singles mean when they talk about dating ‘chemistry.’ The release goes on to define chemistry as being more about comfort and good conversation than physical attraction — which probably isn’t what most people would expect. It was a terrific angle for a story and got a lot of attention because everybody talks about ‘chemistry’ and no one had really defined it before this release.

5. Go “old school” with direct mail.

Even in today’s electronic world of email, texting, and social media, direct mail is still a highly effective workhorse. There are several reasons for that. The first is that there is less competition in your mailbox than in your inbox.

There’s also more engagement with physical mail than there is with email. Another factor that makes direct mail such a winning proposition is that you can pinpoint your target audience with laser-like precision. Finally, since you look at only one envelope at a time, there’s less information overload with physical mail than when your inbox is crowded with email subject lines.

6. Create and nurture “joint venture” relationships.

A joint venture is simply a collaboration with someone else with the goal of making money for both of you. In order to identify good joint venture (JV) partners, you want to ask yourself, Who else has relationships with the types of people I want as customers or clients? These are the people you want to connect with to determine if there is some way that you can jointly market your services. For example, realtors are a natural JV partner for mortgage brokers. Financial advisors and estate-planning lawyers make obvious sense. Chiropractors fit nicely with personal injury attorneys and sports coaches.

Once you’ve developed these relationships, there are lots of joint marketing activities you can engage in, including sharing trade show booths, doing webinars together, referring business to each other, etc. The success of any joint venture relationship ultimately hinges on trust, and that takes time. Simply calling someone and suggesting that you cross-promote each other’s products or services seldom has a positive result. However, if you can develop the right relationships, joint ventures can be extremely effective and add significant dollars to your bottom line.

Mark Satterfield is the founder and CEO of Gentle Rain Marketing, Inc.  He specializes in working with consultants, advisers, and small businesses on how to get consistent streams of new business.  Since 1992, he has helped clients in financial services, insurance, health care, consulting, real estate, advertising, training, recruiting, and more than 75 niche industries grow their businesses without cold calling or hard selling. He is the author of “The One Week Marketing Plan“.