5 Marketing Tips You Need this Week

I’ve been talking to a lot of small business owners this week about what they need to do to have better marketing systems in place for the year. Here’s a few things I kept saying…

1. A CRM – YES, you need a database. NO Outlook isn’t a database. I use Zoho for my CRM – I love it because it integrates easily with MailChimp and I can assign tasks and follow up for people so I don’t have to remember to follow up, Zoho will tell me to. Everyone’s talking about Insightly this week too – I don’t care what CRM you use, I care that you have one AND use it.
2. Follow Up – why aren’t you getting new business? Because you never follow up with people. For every networking event you attend schedule a half hour the next day to do all the follow up you promised you’d do. I send the follow up notes, make the calls, add people to Zoho, and connect with them on LinkedIn. It’s not hard, it’s a little time consuming, but it totally pays off. I’ve had 4 calls this week that prove it.
3. Newsletter – I’m not really going to preach on this because I do too often, but once a month is great. Don’t over think it, just give me a tip or two or three, make it look clean/pretty/whatever and be easy to read. Tell you what – I’ll do a newsletter review of your current newsletter for FREE – just email it to me.
4. Networking – Oh your pipeline is empty? Yeah, mine wasn’t great either. Q4 sucked. But back up on the horse and away we go. Get out of your house and go physically network with other people. My goal this year? 1 event a week and 1 1:1 a week. My pipeline is filling up…
5. It Takes Time – Oh you’ve been going to that networking group for 3 months and haven’t gotten business yet? Yeah, that happens. Make sure you’re tweaking your message, maybe it’s not resonating. Give away a raffle item – especially if people choose what items they want to win, then you know you’re on to something by the amount of tickets for your item. Do your follow up. Make the coffee dates, make sure you’re maximizing the opportunities within the organization. It’s really yours to lose. But yeah, it takes time.