Online Marketing: Don’t Forget Your Clients

When trainers, consultants, and professional coaches set up or maintain an online marketing campaign, prospects are typically the focus.  This makes sense as marketing to prospects is the most direct way of generating new business.  Unfortunately this focus often blinds trainers, consultants, and professional coaches to another, likely more valuable, group; their clients.  Including communications and exclusive offers to clients within an online marketing campaign is a good way to increase client loyalty and generate referral business.

Usually if clients are factored in to online communications it’s in the form of a client newsletter.  While a newsletter can be valuable, it’s just one channel of potential bonuses that can be offered to clients.  Some added options might be:

  • Client Portal on the Web – Do you have a client only section?  This could be a portal on the website or an exclusive group within your social media.
  • Client Offers – These offers could be free access to paid events, early access to whitepapers or reports, or discounts on materials.  Making the communication exclusive goes a long way toward making the offer credible.  For instance, sending a special email offer works, putting the offer on a public site or social media page doesn’t.
  • Online Supported Referrals – Referrals are a key factor for trainers, consultants, and professional coaches to generate new business.  Having an online referral form process in a client portal or sending a list of hot prospects you’d like to be introduced to can be a good prompt to getting clients in the mindset of providing introductions.

This is a small sampling but are pieces often overlooked by trainers, consultants, and professional coaches.  A client marketing plan can have two major benefits if done well.  It will produce warm prospects while strengthening the bond to your client base.

Will Internet Marketing Sell My High Ticket Items?

A question that trainers, consultants, and professional coaches ask is, “How will an online marketing campaign sell my services?  The typical price is x thousands of dollars.”  The simple answer is, “It won’t”.  At least not directly.  However, it is possible to break down the campaign into sections and make small sales/relationship builders that result in easier sales for the high ticket services.

When directly marketing a product or service, price plays a factor.  How often do you get an email asking you to buy a car?  Hopefully the answer is never because no one is going to spontaneously buy something that costs tens of thousands of dollars.  Even online car listings require interaction with a sales person on site to ensure a vehicle meets a buyers wants/needs.  Ads for particular events or vehicle models are prevalent.  That’s because the ads are designed to get a person interested in visiting a dealer so the sales force can take over the sales process.

Trainers, consultants, and professional coaches are no different.  Most of the services offered run into the tens of thousands of dollars and there is no layout/copy that’s going to convert prospects directly to clients.  This is due to price as well as complexity of the service being purchased.  Prospects usually need individualized information about the training, consulting, or coaching which is very difficult if not impossible to duplicate in a static communication.

So the strategy for engaging prospects changes to some smaller offer.  This is typically done through small items like books, materials, or events.  Prices range from free to thousands of dollars for these items.  Typically the more it costs/the more complex it is, the more resistance there will be from prospects.

The effectiveness of these offers typically mirrors how engaged an audience is.  Someone that’ already engaged in an informative email, social media, blog, etc. campaign will pre-assign credibility to your offers and is more likely to take advantage if it meets a need.  Prospects that are new or blindly communicated to, will put little credence to an offer and will be strongly resistant to even minimal pricing/complexity.

Don’t take this formula as a suggestion to compete on price. That is usually a losing battle online as someone is almost always willing to go cheaper.  What it does mean is that expectations should be set based on the offer being made.

Here are two examples of offers that should have different expectations/processes for engaging a prospect:

  • Purchase our $20 book – This is a small investment proposition. It’s reasonable to expect that prospects will purchase the book with no personal interaction from an individual with your firm.  The engagement funnel allows for people to make direct purchases of the book from an online marketing campaign.  This pool of prospects can then be followed up with by the sales team to gauge whether they are a valid candidate for higher ticket services.
  • Attend a 2-Day event for $1500 – This is a higher investment proposition.  It’s unreasonable to expect any but the most engaged prospects to purchase based off of a single promotional communication.  It’s more likely that the online marketing will introduce the idea and the sales team can use that as leverage for getting people to sign up for the event.  Metrics and data from the online campaign can be used to form a contact list based on people that have some interaction with the initial communication.

The exception to this is the amount of time/effort/money invested in promoting an offer.  National speaking events rely on pure marketing (online and otherwise) to fill massive venues but they also invest significant time (typically 4-6 months lead time) and a large budget to promote the event.  In many cases, large speaking events are an inverse model for offers made by smaller training, consulting, and professional coaching firms in that they spend a lot up front for an event in hopes of selling large amounts of materials to attendees.

This strategy is an unreasonable investment in time and money for many trainers, consultants, and professional coaches.  In these cases, setting reasonable expectations allows for an effective action plan to be put in place.  Rather than relying on a marketing juggernaut, offers can be tailored to fit the amount of personal interaction outside of marketing that needs to take place to sell prospects.

Email Marketing and Social Media Aren’t in Conflict

There seems to be a perceived conflict between email marketing and social media.  The conflict is usually summed up as social media taking the place of email.  The truth is that the two are intertwined and not at odds with one another.  Well done online marketing integrates the two to communicate to diverse audiences in the way they want to receive the message.

This post was spawned from a recent site review with a client.  Upon seeing that their site was netting record hits and realizing that social media networks were ranked 3, 5, and 6 for traffic sources my client thought he wanted to scale back on email marketing frequency.

So my client and I weighed the probable effect of that.  The first issue is that half the content fed to social media was featured in the email campaign so content management would be a wrinkle to scaling back.  The second major issue was how it could affect the success of the site.  Guess what the primary source of traffic was?  You guessed it, email marketing clicks.  In fact the clicks from that email campaign were 9 times as much as all the social networks combined.

Social media, email, and your website should be intertwined.  The goal is not for one to replace another, they all serve a unique role.  Maybe years down the a unified system that integrates all our web presences will exist.  For now it’s our responsibility to ensure each online marketing channel support the other.

Email marketing communications should include links to social network profiles.  Social networks should provide a sign up process to join the email marketing lists.  Both should point to your website and your website should have corresponding referring links.  In other words each channel supports the other.

Email Marketing: What to Do About a Mistake

A social media post or a webpage can be immediately updated or removed if a mistake is present. Email, however, presents a unique challenge when an error is sent out.  If an email platform has a retract feature, the results are typically spotty at best.  This means that once an email is sent, there’s really no going back.  When a mistake happens it’s usually a scramble to rectify the situation.  A quick analysis and assigning an action plan is critical for an appropriate timely response.

The first step to dealing with an email marketing error is to stay calm.  Analysis of the error is needed to assign an appropriate response.  When boiled down there are essentially three options when an error occurs:

  1. Ignore It – This is a viable option.  Just don’t make it a default option.  If the error is minor like a misspelled word or grammar error it’s probably best to let it go.  Yes, a few sticklers on your email list might respond but by and large it’s not going to have an impact on your ongoing campaigns. If it’s a small mistake that’s likely to go unnoticed then it’s not worth hitting your lists inbox again.
  2. Targeted resend – If an error affects a subset of your list then a correction needs to be sent only to the affected recipients.  This is often the case if a link is broken or referencing the wrong page.  It can also be the case if you have lists broken into versions (like html layout and text layout).  If you can isolate a group or list then do so.  No sense sending an update to everyone about a broken link.  Rather send the update to the recipients that clicked the link.
  3. Resend – This is the final and most drastic action.  If there is a major problem or the wrong content goes to the wrong audience then a resend is necessary.  Basically if the body of the email contains a significant problem, then everyone who received it will need a replacement.  The resend should be done quickly and include a note in the body or the subject line explaining that this is a corrected version of the flawed email.

Mistakes happen.  Of course reviewing for errors beforehand is the best course of action but every person running an email marketing campaign will have an error go out sooner or later.  The difference between it having a lasting effect and being a barely noticeable issue depends on what the error is and how efficiently the mistake is corrected.

Should I Include the Price?

A question that pops up is whether a price should be advertised right off the bat or on a second level that people have to navigate to.  The answer to this depends on space limitations, price appeal, and communication vehicle. But as a guiding rule pricing should be included unless it’s a complex product, service, or offer where pricing is not easily outlined.

For something simple like a banner ad or a social media update a price likely shouldn’t be included unless it’s a selling point.  The reason for this is purely functional, there’s not enough room to focus on anything but incentives to click.  However the landing page should display pricing clearly if possible so that users aren’t frustrated in finding it.

For website pages or detailed communications the answer is yes, unless it’s a complex product or service where pricing models would be unreasonably complex.  It’s frustrating for users to see a straightforward offer or product and not see pricing.  Furthermore it becomes a headache for the site owner because they will be flooded with, “how much does x cost,” questions.

Basically the answer is to include a price as soon as it’s feasible.  If you are offering something simple and have a defined price it’s best to include it early.  Your audience is going to want to see pricing so it’s better to be direct rather than make additional steps that can appear like it’s trying to be concealed.

Online and Email Marketing: There’s No Magic Bullet

I’m often asked, “What should I change in my approach?”, or “What best practice should I adopt to improve performance?” I always struggle to answer these questions for 3 reasons.

The first is that it’s usually asked before I have a chance to understand the online and email marketing campaigns. The second reason is because the answer is always different for different people/companies. The third is that there is often an assumption that one thing will revolutionize the online and/or email marketing which usually is not the case.

The first 2 reasons are just circumstances of reality. But the third is a pitfall that leads to frustrations when expectations are unreasonably high. Sure, there are some common mistakes that can be easily corrected, but generally great online and email marketing campaigns evolve from a series of small improvements. It’s rarely a quick change that causes a major improvement.

Even when we read/hear/experience stories of drastic improvement, it’s rare that these major benefits are retained immediately. Rather there is a drop off that stabilizes as the change is integrated into ongoing efforts.

Email and online marketing is a marathon, not s sprint. Don’t look for a magic bullet that will dramatically improve performance but rather focus on continually making small improvements. If your effort is consistent over time you’ll see that your online and email marketing campaigns have become best-in-class without even noticing the change.

Online Marketing: Don’t Mistake New for Better.

I was recently informed by a client that they needed to step up their social media presence because “email is on the way out”.  That was a shock to me as most of my clients (this one included) see a nice return on their email marketing investment.  In fact, industry wide email marketing boasts a leading ROI among online marketing efforts with $42.08 generated from every dollar spent.  In short, my client was mistaken.  He’d made the error of thinking “new” was “better”.

Social media seems to be the new “new”.  It’s one of the first things out of people’s mouths when internet marketing comes up.  And I don’t mean to pick on social media, it’s a valuable tool.  It just shouldn’t be put on a pedestal above older communication channels that still outperform it.

An older example is when CSS layouts were first appearing.  Many companies rushed to update their pages for the new “standard”.  The problem was that many of the web browsers weren’t quite up to speed in rendering these sites so web developers had to create multiple versions for individual browsers.  That made developing the site significantly more expensive.  The difference between jumping on CSS layouts when it was new and when browser support increased was potentially tens of thousands of dollars.  At the end of the day there was no difference between a tabled layout and a CSS layout to most users but the early adopters could revel in the “newness” for a short period of time.

Neglecting other marketing channels to do what’s “new” can be very problematic when resources are shifted to a new media that does not perform as well as an older one.  It’s like trading a dollar for a quarter, it might be shinier but there’s no financial upside.

Of course I’m not suggesting that you let your online marketing stagnate into a tried and true rut.  Innovation and new technology will come up and many times it should be adopted.  But focus on effectiveness not newness.  When you keep track of what’s performing best it keeps the allure of “new” out of your decision making.  Online marketing is about increasing awareness of a company, driving opportunities, and ultimately having a positive impact on the bottom line.  Newness is hard pressed to affect any of those things on its own.

Monitor Bounces: Email

Like websites, there’s a temptation to look at the positive metrics rather than improving negative ones.  Bounces from email is a great indicator of list health.

An email campaign that has a low bounce rate (under 10%) is often a well built list that is regularly maintained.  The benefit of this is that it usually reflects audience engagement.  Poorly built lists can see bounce rates approach 50%.  This is typically a sign of poorly compiled lists or a build up of bad addresses over an extended period.

Monitoring your bounce rate has a few benefits:

  • It let’s you know if your list quality is acceptable (going over 20% bounce rates is a sign of trouble).
  • It makes maintenance a recurring task so that bad email addresses can be removed.  This often saves money on your email list provider as the list or emails sent gets smaller.
  • It gives an idea of true audience so if your list begins to shrink then efforts to boost subscribers can be launched.

Don’t just focus on the positive metrics like opens and clicks.  Keeping an eye on who isn’t getting your email communications can be as informative as knowing who does.

Define Success: Email Marketing

Using generic metrics for gauging success is very common in email marketing.  Specifically the most common gauges are:

  • Open rate
  • Click rate

Don’t misunderstand, these metrics are important but for most email campaigns they should not be the defining factor in measuring success.  Success depends on the intent of the email.

Here’s an example, an email campaign that consists of one communication promoting an event and a second that offers informative tips.  The open rate matters in both cases as it is an indicator of subject line clarity and recipient loyalty.

In fact, for the informative tip the open rate is a good immediate indicator.  However, the rate of the email being forwarded might be a better gauge because it clearly indicates that recipients valued the content.  Even a fairly small percent of forwards is a major victory because this particular metric typically only records a fraction of actual forwarding activity.

For the event promotion opens are a good initial indicator and click through rates are important.  However drilling down to what was clicked on is typically more important.  Were people drawn to a video link, an image, a headline, or a particular hyperlink?  This information is a better gauge for success because it can be linked to who registered for the event as well as inform future communication on what draws the target audience.

Of course this is only a sample and other metrics would be more critical to success in other cases.  The point is that open and click rates are usually a starting point to evaluating a campaign.  They rarely are capable of being a stand-alone gauge for success.

1 2 3 4