A Process Of On-Going Improvement (POOGI) - Part 41

Use Internet Marketing to Increase Leads

We are continuing our series based on The Goal by Eliyahu M Goldratt and the Theory of Constraints. {This series was co-written with Brad Stillahn.}

The focus, priorities, and actions your company takes should be different depending on whether your company is internally or externally constrained. If your company can produce and ship 20 to 30% more sales with existing resources, it is externally constrained.

If you’ve determined that your company is externally constrained, you need a lot more sales and fast. That’s the focusing mechanism of Theory of Constraints (TOC). Your attention should be on getting more sales.

Let’s make some assumptions:
1. Your operations are 100% on-time (after all, you’re externally constrained, so you should have capacity to be on-time), and
2. You have determined your target market, and
3. Your conventional marketing and sales efforts are getting the results they are getting and you believe that won’t change much in the short-term, and
4. Your company’s products and capabilities are desirable to prospects if they just knew about them (you need more qualified leads), and
5. Your company has developed an un-refusable offer backed up by a guarantee (what we call a “Mafia Offer”), and
6. You can’t to afford to spend much.

What’s the one thing you could focus on doing that would bring the biggest increase in sales? These days, it might be effective Internet Marketing.

Start with free or low-cost approaches to get prospects calling you.

First, your website needs to be more that a picture of your building or an on-line brochure, and should be built around communicating your Offer.

Second, use Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Select keywords that prospects are likely to search on when looking for what your company does. Your goal is to be on the first page of search engine results for those keywords.

Third, commit to a consistent small monthly budget (for example, $500) for Pay-Per-Click advertising.

Consider the following case of a client of ours. The starting condition was that their website was just a picture of their building. They were nowhere to be found on the search engines. That is, if you didn’t know their website address, it wouldn’t show up on a keyword search. They had no database of prospects. They had no marketing or sales representatives. In summary, their basic approach was to let prospects somehow find them, which wasn’t working very well.

The first thing we did was change the front page of their website to communicate their Mafia Offer. Rather than depending on outside programmers, we used an easy-to-change website technology (for just $25 per month) that gave the client the ability to make changes and update the website themselves. Next, we recorded a brief video of the client describing their Offer with an inexpensive webcam. Then we sent the video, imbedded with the keywords we had chosen (in this case, one was “custom metal fabricated parts”), to all of the social networking sites. Literally within minutes, the client was on the first page of the search results! Why? …because the Search Engines love video.

In addition, the client began to systematically use Pay-Per-Click advertising for the same keywords.

With the combination of Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click, our client started getting between 10 and 20 visitors per day to their website.

When a prospect finds you, it doesn’t stop there. You have to provide value. Perhaps it is a white paper on a subject that your company is an expert. Offer the white paper in return for the prospect’s name and email address. Our client began building their prospect list, and then began sending everyone an email every other week on a relevant topic related to what they do.

What were the results? After spending only $110, the client landed an account worth $80,000 per month. For a small company of $2 million annual sales, that was cause for celebration! The prospect had found our client by searching on-line for the keywords, and had really studied the client’s site on several occasions to understand the Offer before they called to follow-up. When the prospect called the owner, they were ready to buy!

Once your company is successfully using Internet Marketing, there is more to do. Upgrading your website and videos is important. Relevant content for your prospect list is crucial. Emails, blogging and podcasting may be appropriate. We also recommend your company get a Facebook account.

Want more information? Please email and we will send you a brief paper with more detailed recommendations on how you can manage Internet Marketing yourself, along with some example videos.

...to be continued.

Here's to maximizing YOUR profits!

Dr Lisa Lang

(c)Copyright 2009, Dr Lisa, Inc. All rights reserved.