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Over the next few months I will be sharing with you new, different, easy, and exciting ways to win more clients and make more sales. I will be taking you “out of the box” and putting you in the real world of creative marketing to win fresh new business and get appointments.
First, we will look at blogs and learn how to use blogs to connect you with prospects who matter… with prospects who become sales leads.
Blogs – short for “web logs” – are online diaries that allow bloggers to post their thoughts, ideas, and to interact with the world around them. Blogs have been around for many years, primarily as a way for individuals to record their thoughts and feelings. Only in recent years has it grown in popularity as a mainstream way for businesses to generate sales leads and serve customers.
What can blogs do for your business to get more appointments increase sales?
•You can use blogs to help you build strong and lasting relationships and find out more about your customers’ needs and aspirations… this will make it so easy to turn sales leads into sales.
•You can use blogs to engage in an open dialogue and exchange of ideas with customers and potential customers… this will encourage them to book appointments.
•you can use blogs to broadcast news about your company… this will help to stay in contact as an alternative (but not a replacement!) to cold calling.
When you create a blog you are not just creating a webpage that needs to be updated every few months or years. Instead you are committing to regularly contributing to a dedicated readership of people. Don’t think of them as telesales customers, think of them as a community of fans. The blog community is very loyal and if you create good content, you will get a loyal following of readers who are interested in what you have to say. (And that interest will lead to sales).
When you are choosing what you want to blog about, be sure to think in terms of what your customers and prospects want to read about. You may want to blog about your industry, but if they won’t be interested in reading about the industry, then you will probably be wasting your time. That will not get you any appointments or sales.
Instead, think first about what would draw your customers and prospects. What would interest them? What would capture their attention? What would they respond to? What would draw them back again and again and again? What would keep them interested for long enough before they realize that they would be willing to have a meeting with you to make a purchase?
By putting your customer first when thinking about the blog topic, you are increasing the likelihood that they will read your blog, return to it again, and recommend it to family and friends… and ultimate allow you to make sales.
For example, if you sell products or services to new moms, don’t feel that you need to talk about what is going on in the industry. Rather, talk to new moms about ideas, services, news, and (of course) your products to help them be better moms.
Once you have decided on a topic, it’s time to sign up for a blog. There are several choices in blog software available and you should check them all out to determine what works best to support your telemarketing efforts. Some of the most popular are movabletype.org, typepad.com, and blogger.com. Blogger’s product is completely free, Movabletype’s blogs offer both free and paid versions, and Typepad’s blogs come in varying levels of paid service. You may want to start off with a free site (which may have a prefix after it, such as [yoursite].blogspot.com), but you should be aware that this looks less professional than owning your own site (for example [yoursite].com). Professional helps build sales.
Don’t get caught up in what your blog should look like. This can be a major timewaster and it does not contribute to sales. Choose a template that is easy to use and looks nice for your target audience and use that. Avoid the temptation to spend too much time on this part of the blog. The time you spend here will not return the investment as much as spending time in other aspects of the blog, such as content.
When setting up your blog, get a URL that is clear and preferably contains the keyword or keywords that your topic is about. This will help it search better in search engines. Higher searches lead to more readers. More readers lead to more appointments. More appointments lead to more sales.
Lastly, create a blogging schedule so that you always have something to blog about. Just like in telesales, procrastination can lead to inactivity and that will keep you from booking appointments. It can be easy to put off the topic until the last minute and then scramble for something to blog about, only to end up saying “I will blog tomorrow”. It may seem like a little more work now but it will really pay off in the long run.
Blogging is a great way to connect with your customers and your prospects by posting information, insight, and opinion that is interesting to them. You will build up a loyal readership and that readership can convert into sales.
