Risk & Business Magazine Bowen Miclette & Britt Spring 2017 | Page 9

PROSPECTS FOR PENNIES
Prospects For Pennies:
Find Gold In Abandoned
Advertising
H
ere’s an age-old business
puzzle: You need advertising
to get clients and make
money, but you need
money – and lots of it – to
advertise. How do you solve it? Start by
using ads abandoned by your out-of-
business competitors.
Count the signs listing phone numbers as
you drive down the street in a commercial
area or the number of ads you notice as you
surf the net. Signs and ads are often paid in
advance for a few months or more, which
is why when a business closes up shop,
their ads stay “open.” The same is true for
classified ads that run for six months or
more. To take advantage of their prepaid
advertising, call the number listed on your
competitor’s signs and ads. If you hear a
ring, move on to the next ad. If you hear a
recorded message informing you that the
phone number has been disconnected, call
your local phone company and ask them
to redirect the abandoned phone number
to your business line. Yes, it is that simple.
And yes, it works.
Once you redirect a former competitor’s
old phone number, your phone will ring
almost immediately. Prospects who
are calling on those up and running
advertisements will now be automatically
forwarded to you. When prospects call,
don’t be sneaky. Let them know that the
company they are looking for is no longer
in business, but you will gladly serve them.
After you’ve checked all of the ads, start
with the online phone listings for your
local area. If you want to attract prospects
outside of your region, check competitor’s
listings in the toll-free directories, which
you can also find online. Then, move on to
other online directories. Search industry-
specific directories for ads, sponsored
listings and regular listings. For example,
if you are in the party rental and supply
business, you might find competitors in
one of the resource directories for event
planners.
Don’t forget to check your old trade
show directories. Most people hold on
to their directories as a resource, so find
out if any of your competitors listed in
the directory have gone out of business
and redirect all of their prospects to your
company. And don’t stop there. There’s
a lot of prospecting to be done. Redirect
abandoned fax numbers, and then
move on to web domains. You can often
purchase dumped domains on the cheap,
and then redirect the domain to your
website.
Besides the phone number and web
domain strategy I just taught you, my
favorite tactic is redirecting failed live
events. If you know of a seminar, workshop
or other live event that would attract your
customer base, reach out to the event hosts
two weeks before the event and find out
if they plan to go through with the event
as planned. Two weeks is right around
the time events are cancelled due to low
registration. If the hosts want to cancel,
offer to partner with them to do a smaller,
alternative event for those people who did
register, and share in the revenue. You get
access to the registrants who now see you
as an authority (co-host), the attendees
have a fantastic experience, and the
original hosts save face by sending people
to a more “intimate” event. It’s a win-win-
win.
So before you blow your budget on street
signs, billboards, fancy websites, full-
page ads or even live events, look around.
It takes a few hours of your time to find
abandoned opportunities, and just pennies
(or nothing) to redirect prospects to your
business. There’s a lot of gold out there.
Happy digging. +
PROFIT FIRST: A Simple
System to Transform Any
Business from a Cash-Eating
Monster to a Money-Making
Machine
by: mike michalowicz
In Profit First, Michalowicz explains how
this age-old accounting formula turns
great businesses into cash-eating monsters,
trapping you in a day-to-day, check-to-check
struggle to survive. He reveals how to flip that
“Frankenstein Formula” and take profit first
without compromising your business, and
why the Profit First Formula of Sales – Profit =
Expenses actually forces innovation, supports
sustained growth and skyrockets profits.
BY: mike michalowicz
KEYNOTE SPEAKER & AUTHOR
Mike Michalowicz is the entrepreneur behind
three multimillion dollar companies and is the
author of Profit First. He is globally recognized
as the guy who “challenges out dated business
beliefs” and teaches us what to do about it.
To learn more about Mike and get access to
a treasure trove of entrepreneurial tips, visit
MikeMichalowicz.com.
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