Author Archive for Ashley Lichty

The Secret of Market Presence Building

Published
by
Ashley Lichty
on March 13, 2008
in Public Relations
. 0 Comments
by Ashley Lichty

In today’s competitive business world, small companies often get swallowed up. Making your presence known can be tough, but the Internet has changed all that. With the web, small business can now get their services out there and build a strong online reputation. It’s call market presence building and more companies need to be doing it!

Online market presence building is basically like doing web PR - getting your name out there in different ways. The Internet makes many things possible and your first step to having a strong market presence online is an awesome website. After all, this is the new millennium and having an interactive, fully-loaded website is a necessity.

You website should have a blog relating to your industry, and several employees blogging several times a week. Blog posts are often circulated all over the web, and really creative or informative posts can often go a long way to market presence building. A forum or chat of some sort can often do the same thing, so having some combination of the three is a good bet.

In some ways, controlling your market presence building is like hiring a public relations manager to control your online reputation. What shows up in search engines for your company right now? Is it your site, blogs, new stories and favorable reviews of your company? Or does your name yield bad reviews, BBB complaints and rip-off reports? It’s important that those types of things DO NOT come up on the first page of search engines when somebody looks up your company.

By taking an active role in your market presence building, you can help control some of the Web publicity your company gets. For example, you can easily become known as an expert in your field online by having your company author 1-2 articles per week on your industry and submitting them to the thousands of free article directories across the web. This alone can change the search results for your company’s name.

Add to that regular blogging and several press releases a month, and you’ve begun your own market presence building plan. Having a strong Internet presence naturally leads to brand awareness and lead generation. In the end, like any other marketing, it all comes back to lead generation!

Search marketing through Google, Yahoo and other pay per click programs is a good way to supplement your market presence building. Basically, you build a campaign of keywords and ad text so when a user types in your keywords, your ad and website pop up. You only pay when the user actually clicks on your ad, which can better target your market and save you money on marketing.

SEO (search engine optimization) is another way to bolster your market presence building. It involves techniques (a lot of site optimization and link building) that will lead to your site popping up in organic search results. This all depends on your keywords and what words people use to link to you. SEO tends to be a longer process but in the end can be cheap and send a ton of traffic to your site.

Market presence building is key to having a good reputation online and generating your company more leads. Whatever plan you develop, be sure to involve several aspects, whether SEO, article writing, pay per click or press release distribution. It isn’t a process that will happen overnight, but once you get it going, it is definitely a snowball affect!

About the Author:
About the Author: Ms. Lichty is a dabbler in social media and SEO guru with ProspectMX. Find more information on market presence building practices at the author’s website.

The Secret of Prospect Cultivation

Published
by
Ashley Lichty
on March 8, 2008
in Marketing
. 0 Comments
by Ashley Lichty

Any business without a strong follow-up plan isn’t likely to go very far. Prospect cultivation is one of the most important aspects of a marketing plan. How are you suppose to turn leads into clients without a strong plan?

Prospect cultivation isn’t rocket science. It really comes down to treating your leads the way you would want to be treated. It means not being too pushy and aggressive. It means contacting them regularly (but not too often!) until they’re ready to buy. It’s important to build a relationship and become the trusted expert of your industry they turn to by providing the information they may need.

For example, a real estate agent may have 10 prospective seller leads they are cultivating. Rather than contacting the leads all the time asking if they are ready to list their home, an agent may want to send them weekly emails with pertinent information, such as tips for raising home value, a checklist “Open House” tips as well as bi-weekly updates on the market and their home value.

The agent comes across more as a helpful expert than a pushy salesperson - THAT is what prospect cultivation is about. You build up trust and a relationship with each lead. Every company should have a follow-up plan for each type of lead they have (prospective client, past customer, etc) and fine-tune that plan down to a science.

Of course, when you have hundreds of thousands of leads to follow up with, prospect cultivation can wind up a bit complicated. When dealing with thousands of new leads per week, how can you possibly coordinate follow-up. When should a salesperson call a lead? How often? What do they talk about when they do call?

That’s where an automated follow-up system comes in. There are plenty of programs available called customer relationship management (CRMs) and contact management systems (CMS) that can automate much of the follow up a sales force must do. These programs can take prospect cultivation to a whole new level.

Most CMSs come with the same general features: task lists and reminders, calendars and email drip campaigns. These campaigns are a series of emails (pre-written) that can be scheduled to go out any time (weekly, biweekly, etc) over a certain time period. The include material leads would find useful and often incorporate a follow-up phone call with script for a sales person to utilize. True prospect cultivation comes from consistent and persistent follow-up.

A company can often get a CRM system built to it’s own specifications and have it include many other features. Unfortunately, many companies today don’t even realize what CRMs are available, and if they do they don’t realize what a difference it could make for their business. If you’re not utilizing some sort of automated follow-up system, chances are your prospect cultivation is suffering.

About the Author:
The author, Ashley Lichty is a content developer and SEO at ProspectMX.com. Get more information on prospect cultivation, lead generation and other topics from ProspectMX.com.

The Basics of Customer Loyalty Building

Published
by
Ashley Lichty
on March 6, 2008
in Customer Service
. 0 Comments
by Ashley Lichty

There’s no reason in the world why a customer who has used your product once shouldn’t use it again and again. No reason why they shouldn’t be a life long customers. Customer loyalty building can bring past clients back to buy again and again.

Most businesses don’t even think about creating a customer loyalty campaign. Although similar to lead follow-up, building customer loyalty is new ground for many companies. First things first is making sure you’ve got yourself a quality product or service.

You first step to customer loyalty building is having true quality service. Next, you’ve got to make sure your clients will always remember you. Businesses that forget about a customer as soon as the sale is made are NOT practicing good business practices. The sales is only the beginning of contact with a customer - to be honest, you should keep in touch with that customer until they die.

So if your excuse for not following up with past cast clients was not seeing the value in it, now you know better. Any customer that buys once has the potential to buy again and again, so no excuses! Now if you’re feeling a bit ignorant as to how to go about customer loyalty building, here’s some information on that!

Customer loyalty building is similar to regular marketing in that you have to consider your target audience to come up with a good plan. Keep a database of every customer, what they purchased and when they made the purchase. You can build your campaign timeline around this. However long your product lasts is how long it will be till they’re ready to buy again. A car obviously has a longer shelf life than toilet paper.

Next, brainstorm reasons to contact past clients, whether it is informative products, product updates or free gifts. Customer loyalty building often involves free giveaways. Sending holiday and birthday cards are also great for building top of mind awareness. Once you’ve got content, you have to figure out a way to get it to your prospects.

Of course, the more systematic your approach to customer loyalty building, the more efficient you’re likely to be. It’s important to map out a system of follow-up for your past clients, including direct mail, email and phone contact. A CRM (customer relationship management) program for your computer systems is a must for this process, and saves time and money.

In the long run, the steps you take for your customer loyalty building often mirror your prospect cultivation, just with different approaches. They are both just a means of turning potential leads into actual customers. The beauty of past clients is that they should already know how great your product is - making them a nice and easy sale!

About the Author:
About the Author: Ashley Lichty is a content developer and SEO for ProspectMX.com and comes with a strong background in customer service. Learn more about customer loyalty building at her website.