Telephone Answering Biz

Firstly I must apologise for not having posted something for a while. Mostly because we were so busy our heads were just buzzing.

However that got me thinking about our marketing and the question of whether marketing is just a short term task you can do as and when it’s convenient or whether it’s important to have consistent marketing activity all of the time? Personally I think it’s the latter, which made me feel even more aware we didn’t send out our Productivity Guide last month!

Having said that, and in all seriousness, we have been marketing for longer than I can remember and it’s really starting to pay dividends right now. We’ve learnt a lot of lessons along the way – both pleasant and painful – and this month I’d like to share a few of the things which have really helped us make the most of our marketing and, crucially, the time we’ve got available to spend on it.

We all hear that saying “if something is working do more of it” and I couldn’t agree more! Marketing takes time and a good strategy will pay dividends in the long term, and I hope this month I’m able to share some ideas with you that makes it quicker and easier in the short term. And, of course, I’d love to hear any tips or ideas you’ve got which can help us!

LinkedIn
Out of all the social media sites now available, we’ve found that LinkedIn really works well for generating new business. By creating a well written profile, including streams from your blog or twitter (if you use these) and collecting testimonials you have a great tool for not only capturing new leads but, more importantly, building credibility around you and your company. In short, people may respond to how great you say you are or how much of an expert you claim to be, but it’s much more powerful when they can see your experience and hear from your clients outside of your own marketing materials.

Email Marketing
A big part of successful marketing is keeping in touch with the people who show an interest in your business and your existing clients or customers, and nothing does this better than email marketing. You can reach everyone you know with just a few clicks and a few pounds, and there are even fully managed services who take your copy and pictures and prepared your campaigns for you each month which only cost a few pounds more than doing it yourself (we use a great company, if you want their details drop me an email)

Asking for Referrals
Here’s something you should be doing no matter what line of business you’re in – and best of all, it’s completely free!

Asking for referrals is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get new business (provided you’re doing a good job!) and they’re much more effective than traditional marketing as the sales message is coming from the referee (who the prospect likely trusts). After all, you’re bound to say your widgets are the best, but it’s much more effective when someone else says it.

One of the recent opportunities in marketing is “social media marketing”, using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networking sites to connect with and build relationships with your networks. It’s something that can be both incredibly powerful and incredibly time consuming.

However, what you may not know is that there are a number of online and downloadable tools which can help you boost your productivity. Our favourite is Hootsuite, a “Social Media Dashboard” which lets you manage your Twitter, Facebook (personal and business), LinkedIn, Ping.fm, MySpace, Foursquare and even WordPress blogs (currenlty only those on WordPress.com) all from one central place.

As well as updating your profiles, one of my favourite features is that you can schedule your updates into the future – great for making it possible to spend an hour or two creating a week’s content rather than trying to find a few minutes here and there.

It’s a fantastic piece of software and is available free of charge, and if you’re considering social media marketing or want to get more control over your current campaigns it’s well worth a look