rWord-of-mouth consists of two different strategies:
1. Referral based. This aims to encourage known customers, colleagues or suppliers to give favourable recommendations about your products or services to their own contacts, thereby generating more opportunities.
2 Influencer based. This is my favourite strategy and sets out to identify selected individuals and prime them to influence potential buyer groups on your behalf but this strategy requires more specialist support.
5 Steps To A Perfect Referral Strategy:
1. Set a target—how many referrals do you want per week or per month?
2. Identify satisfied customers who are likely to refer you.
3. Ask actively and specifically for the referral or referrals.
4. Confirm the approach—will they contact them or hand them over to you?
5. Measure the outcome against your targets.
5 Steps To A Perfect Influencer Strategy
1. Identify the influencers—those with the potential to influence buyers.
2. Set targets for the number of buyers you want and the number of influencers needed.
3. Market to the influencers—give them a reason to be interested in you and your message. (I cover how to connect with influencers in a later chapter.)
4. Market through the influencers—give them tools to carry out your message.
5. Measure the outcome against targets.
Telemarketing
Telephone marketing or telemarketing simply means utilising the phone to call or consult your hottest prospects. Smart marketers use telemarketing to make their ads and other marketing efforts work harder. They know that 7 percent of people hang up on all telemarketers, that 42 percent hang up on some telemarketers, and that 51 percent listen to all telemarketers.
So, here is what you do. You run an ad. You ask readers to call you and then you sell them right there on the telephone. If you're doing that kind of telemarketing now, and you're not using a script, you're not taking telemarketing as seriously as you ought to.
Telemarketing surpassed direct mail a long time ago, and since that time, five crucial points have been discovered and followed by smart marketers.
These are the five simple things you should do to match them:
1. Find out who are your top three telemarketers.
2. Make an audio recording of those top three people.
3. Create a script, using the words, phrases and voice inflections of the top three. In that script, underline the phrases stressed by these top producers.
4. Distribute copies of the three recordings plus three scripts to go with them. Give a set to each of your other telemarketers.
5. Ask those other telemarketers to memorize the script and get it down so pat that it sounds as though it's delivered straight from the heart.
I know that it's tough to operate from a script if you're a free spirit. But I also know that free spirits fail dismally at telemarketing. I've witnessed several tests of scripts versus outlines and the scripts win every time. The winning combination for smart marketers is a potent ad, followed by a potent script so they win sales, relationships, customers' hearts, and profits.
Classified Ads
I bet when you think of classified ads you think in terms of finding a job, looking for a car, selling a sofa, buying a boat or locating a house or apartment. Well think again. Classified advertising can also be used to support and grow a business. I absolutely love classified ads and this is how I built and grew my first 8-figure business.
A classified ad is really just a brief description of something someone is offering in the hope that somebody else is going to be interested in it. Let’s get more specific. A classified ad is really a brief description of a product or service that you are offering. Seems simple enough.