By Victoria Rossi
A marketer or salesperson’s job is never done. It can be a challenge to make cold calls, generate leads, qualify and develop them into prospects, and then close the deal. Wouldn’t it be great if there was an easier way to warm up your lead pipeline and increase the number of prospects that were looking for a reason to close the deal with you? We have good news for you! There are three digital marketing tools that will help you do just that. They are e-newsletters, e-promos, and SEO/SEM.
1. E-Newsletters
E-newsletters are an excellent marketing vehicle because they:
- Get you in front of your prospect
- Give you the opportunity to showcase your expertise
- Allow you to provide your prospect or client something of value
- Can increase your audience
- Keep you top-of-mind
Once you add e-newsletters to your toolbox, make sure you follow some straightforward best practices. Always give your audience the ability to easily:
- Opt-out
- Share your content via email and social media
- Contact you
- Subscribe
- Get more information about products/services that are specifically relevant to them
- Link to your site
Also, be sure to:
- Deliver content of value that your audience can use to improve their business or better their lives. Consider what could be particularly useful to your audience, and offer it without expecting anything in return. Give your audience a reason to open your newsletter, and to be glad that they did. Many will share that valuable content allowing you to reach and positively impact more people.
- Archive your newsletters on your site. This simple act will help improve your site’s SEO.
- Create a blog on your site in which you can use the same content from you e-newsletter. This way you get more mileage out of each piece of content you create, have easily findable content that will provide value to site visitors, and you can showcase your expertise to site visitors that do not receive your e-newsletter. Bonus: Distribute the content through LinkedIn, and your other social media channels.
- Create a regular schedule for your newsletter. Part of the goal is to show your organization is dependable, credible, and organized, and if your newsletter schedule is erratic, it will not reflect well on your organization.
- Track your results, including opens, unsubscribes, complaints, etc. You want to be able to modify your next campaign and begin to develop your own set of best practices.
2. E-Promos
Unlike e-newsletters that are meant to allow you to showcase your expertise, tell your ongoing story, and provide something of value to your audience, the e-promo is more focused in purpose in that it’s primary objective is to propose an offer. The goal of the e-promo is for your audience to take specific action such as making a purchase, scheduling an appointment, or inquiring about a specific product/service you are offering.
Make sure your e-promos are:
- Well-designed
- Focused in their proposal
- Concise in their wording
- Properly linked
- Trackable. See 1.e from above.
3. SEO / SEM
While slightly different but just as powerful, if not more so, is search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). SEO and SEM drive self-qualifying prospects to your site. People conducting specific searches online are at the very least, gathering information, but more often than not, they are ready to consider buying options and be sold. Choose your keywords wisely and direct your traffic accordingly. What do we mean by that? If your keyword phrase is “blue suede shoes” then be sure to direct the corresponding link to a page offering blue suede shoes and not bedazzled red heels. This goes for the SEO on your website and any SEM you do on any of the popular search engines.
Most mid-sized companies already have these tools in place, but their use sometimes get put on the back burner behind bigger budget items such as advertising and events, or urgent items such as getting information to prospects. But remember, the great thing about all three of these tools is that they help the potential prospect self-qualify. They choose to open the e-newsletter and e-promo, and they decide to click on your link and go to your website when they find you in a search. This pre-qualification takes them from cold to hot prospects, and the cost of conducting the above in comparison to those bigger budget items, makes these tools essential in enhancing your marketing program and increasing your sales and business development results.
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Victoria Rossi is CEO of i-media-international a public relations and digital marketing agency based in New York City. At i-media-international, our primary objective is to help your organization meet its sales and communications goals. We do that by bringing together the disciplines and best practices of public relations and digital marketing to create awareness, positioning, new leads, and ultimately, new sales opportunities for your organization. Contact us here.