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This is how it works. You acquire a database of names and emails addresses from people you know, who you meet and also who enter your existing business premise (if you have your own). Basically any one who you come across (especially those who enter your shop or office), you approach and ask if they would like some free information sent to them in the form of a regular (monthly?) newsletter which features information on the area of expertise that you have. If they do (obviously the more attractive you make it sound, they more interested they will be to get such a newsletter), then you collect their first name and email address (more information – e.g. postal address - would be good but not essential). You then produce a monthly newsletter in areas of interest that are applicable to your business. This information does not have to be totally specific, but should relate in a broad sense to your area of business. For example, if you deal in artistic paintings, you could also write about sculpture, museums, art exhibitions, and new stage productions etc (i.e. anything to do with the arts). This is not as hard as it sounds. Firstly do not under estimate the wealth of knowledge that you have about your area of expertise. You may think that you do not know much, but remember that familiarity breeds contempt. You know much more than the average person – just caste your mind back to when you first got involved with your business. Now think of all those things that you have learnt and now take for granted. Secondly, you can get an enormous amount of information from the internet. You can "surf the net" for this information, or just "search" for it via Google or other "search engines". You can also get information from text books, journals and magazines as well as word of mouth information. Once you have a database (you can start with one name and add to the list as you go or perhaps even buy a data base), and you have written some newsletters and you have set up your autoresponder, then you can start sending them out. The idea is to send regular emails or electronic newsletters that are personalised (i.e. the prospective client thinks that you are writing only to them even though you might be sending the newsletter to 10, 20 or a 1000 people).
Once you have all these things (list of names and addresses, newsletters, autoresponder) and you are ready to send out your information, you can also consider a "cross sell" inclusion into you newsletters. How you do this depends on several aspects. Firstly, your database. Remember we mentioned that you might have 2 data bases;
You might also recommend that people on your database start to refer their friends/contacts/relations to get your newsletter. We can help you with that also (you would be best to have a "webform" to do this). You will immediately understand that this will start to increase the number of people on your database that you can communicate to and build a rapport with (with credibility and trust coming later). In other words, you start getting people referred to you who you do not even know. All of these people may end up customers or clients of yours after a period of time (and you did not even know them or meet them initially). Essentially this is the way to increase sales in your existing business (by "cross selling" to existing clients) and to increase future sales by increasing your client data base (through gentle recommendations and referrals to you from other satisfied clients) and also by sending customers (who did not buy anything from you initially) a newsletter.
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