Selling Online Services to Local Offline Businesses

by Nightengale

Posted: 14 years ago 12 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Hi Warriors,

As we all know, the most obvious flaw in most Web sites is the lack of an opt-in form and an incentive of some type for enticing someone to put in their contact information. For Warriors, this is some of the easiest work ever.

However, the most effective online marketing strategy will incorporate offline marketing with online marketing. I've been thinking of what I can offer prospects to boost the impact of their online marketing while still making it easy for me and give me recurring monthly income.

I've seen Send Out Cards mentioned here several times and have seen good reviews on their service. Over the last couple of years, a few people have sent me samples of their cards and I've liked them.

I love SOC's system and want to incorprate it first into my own online marketing efforts and then in my clients' online marketing efforts. And just like with AWeber, I can charge a monthly fee for it.

What do you think of using and selling a system like this to your offline clients?

I love the idea primarily because

1. It's easy to do and can be done from my computer any time, anywhere (just like my autoresponder). I don't have to physically handle anything. (I've done small direct mailings myself and even a few pieces gets very cumbersome and time-consuming QUICK!)

2. A greeting card is personal and if I take the time to make my messages personal, I have a huge head start on building a relationship with my clients and prospects. A greeting card is not generally seen just another piece of junk mail and it's not as costly or time-consuming as a physical newsletter (even though there are services that will do this for you too).

3. It's a great complement to my e-zine! I can still put most of my content in my e-zine where I'm not limited to space (which increases my printing and mailing costs) so I can put as much of what I want in my e-zine. But a greeting card is personal and so long as I take care to incorporate personal messages with it, I'll stand out and become more REAL to my list.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?

I just need ideas/tips for selling this service to offline business owners along with an autoresponder service. That way I generate recurring income while hopefully making my clients very happy.

I assume I'd need to set up my clients with their own SOC accounts instead of doing everything under my own account, right?

Thanks for your help!

Michelle

#businesses #local #offline #online #selling #services

John Romaine 14 years ago

You lost me with the whole send out cards thing - but that may be due to the fact that its now 5:30am here and Im yet to go to bed.

You can make a LOT of money offering marketing services to businesses as mentioned though. Its SO EASY, its ridiculous.

I spoke with someone last week who has just signed up his 6th business at $1,000 a month for a contract of 12 months. That means hes pulling $6,000 a month doing what we all do here blindfolded. He was telling me a close friend of his just cleared $20K a month doing the same thing, with very little effort.
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Andyhenry

14 years ago

Hi Michelle,

I'm not sure that I agree with you 'most obvious flaw' concept - most of the websites I've done for clients - they would never allow something as 'tacky' (that's the way they perceive it) as an opt-in to be on their site. They see those things as annoying and not professional.

Also some of my clients only need a website because some of their customers expect it - the website is not there to make sales or even generate leads.

However, I do think that your thinking is good and the SOC concept can be used in lots of ways.

It sounds like you're struggling with the concept of selling your clients services which you're merely sourcing from somewhere - don't worry about that. They're usually happy for that to be the case.

I spoke with a client this morning about some press releases I'm doing for them and when I mentioned that some of the distribution places have varying fees, the comment was - get us the best one and add something for your time. They're happy to just let me choose the most appropriate and charge them the costs - including my time.

I imagine that's the same for you - they're paying you so that they don't have to think about such things - and that includes your time and knowledge to implement them.

Andy

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John Romaine

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

...the website is not there to make sales or even generate leads.

I REALLY dont get that???????

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Andyhenry

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ramone_johnny

I REALLY dont get that???????

Don't make me explain it

They already know their customers and they already have relationships with them. They're selling consulting services and the only reason they even have a website is that people expect it and they want people to get the basic info about them and how to contact them - they're not selling anything from the site and they have no intention of doing so - the fact that marketers always want to try and squeeze in some 'IM' strategy they're convinced everyone should do is the reason they like me - I only care about their business and their ethos - if they don't want to sell anything from their site -I don't even bother trying to tell them otherwise - I help them in other ways.

I know this is counter-intuitive, but it's another one of those reasons why some people here feel uncomfortable approaching big businesses to help them, they don't play by the same rules that B2C and smaller companies do and if you try to treat them like they don't get it - you're the wrong person for them.

It's simple when you remove your ego from the equation and just look at their business and how best to help them.

Andy

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John Romaine

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

Don't make me explain it

I get your point Andy, and to be truthful, as a freelance web designer, Ive experienced it first hand. "Oh, no we dont need all that, we just want a basic website..."

Most often than not though, the customer doesnt know what they dont know - meaning, theyre probably missing out on some big opportunities.

I guess sometimes you wear the IM hat, othertimes just the multi coloured one with the propellor on top

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Andyhenry

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ramone_johnny

The thing is - despite what people say around here, some businesses really DO know what they're doing and they understand what's possible (not necessarily how to do it though) and they just don't need it. They have their business model and they're working it, they understand their industry and the business they go for is multi-million dollar and at high level - a website is not the sales tool for that business. Sure it can be a great way of supporting their branding and sharing information, but they don't have the inclination or the scope to try and force the web site to fit into the sales process, apart from sharing information.

That's not wrong - it doesn't mean they don't understand like we do - it just means they're not interested in doing things just because they can be done.

I've seen it many times where some IMer whose head contains nothing but IM thoughts tries to shoe-horn a 'funnel' into the websites purpose, or is convinced they need a blog, or should be using social networking, or should have an opt-in page etc. etc.

Sometimes those things are appropriate and sometimes not - the key thing is to know where and when, rather than having blanket assumptions that 'everyone' needs certain things.

Like I said, many business can benefit from many of the things we as IMers know are available, but if you jump in to the business of consulting with offline companies just because you learned some IM chops - you need to be aware that there are no one-size fits all 'everyone needs x' things and listen to the business before launching into how you can help them.

Andy

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Dexx

14 years ago

I've found businesses to get very excited with the idea of building a database of customers and then keeping them in contact using email.

One eye doctor I spoke with spends $500 per month on mailing out physical newsletters to past customers, but has no way to track if they are actually reaching their intended people (bad addresses, customers moved etc.)

So he was more than happy to switch his business into an electronic format, plus I mentioned he could send out faster updates along with links to a custom YouTube channel to promote new products and staff in the clinic =)

As far as postcard-automated systems go, I myself am getting my clients on to http://www.sendpeppermarketing.com as they have no minimums for their jumbo sized - full color (both sides) - first class postage posctards.

They also have the ability to use PURLs to track postcard response rates (which clients love) and other tracking features that are combined with a built-in email autoresponder as well (basically I dont use aWeber AND another service...all done through sendpeppermarketing.com)

They also have an upgrade full-marketing system that allows for built in rules, sales staff reminders, automated voice follow-ups by phone (pre-recorded message) etc.

Might be worth a look

Cheers,

~Dexx

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AndrewCavanagh

14 years ago

One thing you have to remember about most regular brick and mortar businesses...

Their marketing is terrible and nearly any well planned and executed marketing strategy has a good chance of making them profits.

Follow up by direct mail works very well for some businesses (that includes postcards, sales letters, thank you letters, birthday cards, etc etc).

Usually direct mail is more likely to show a high profit when the business has high value cilents (you don't use direct mail for the customers of a newsagent who buy a $1 paper every day but if there's a huge office building who could spend thousands of dollars a month with them or is already spending that money then that's likely to be worth the investment).

As with any strategy you need to think of customizing your solution for the business.

Many marketing strategies will work and when you learn how to apply a new one that gives you yet another weapon in your marketing arsenal and another service you can go back and offer to your existing clients.

But your primary focus needs to be:

"Can I use this strategy to make my clients real sales and profits?"

In some cases the answer will be yes...in some cases no.

Every client is different.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

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Nightengale

14 years ago

Thanks for your comments everyone!

I know each solution needs to be customized to the client and I intend to do that.

But a smart service provider with also create packages and programs to offer to 1) help eliminate confusion for the client, 2) get better results for the client (they might not get good results if they choose services a la carte and don't have enough knowledge/experience to choose the right blend of services on their own) and 3) make more money.

It's true that not everyone needs an opt-in form and autoresponder.

BUT....I'm positioning my online marketing services as a way to 1) attract more clients, 2) retain current clients and 3) significantly lower their marketing budgets.

In offline-marketing-speak, this is customer acquisition and retention at a lower cost.

I'll be going after local small businesses and solo professinals. So for my market and business focus, I think an opt-in form (for followup by e-zine) and offline follow-up program is appropriate.

While I intend to customize solutions for my prospects, I at least need to have a basic range of services to offer and I think that integrating online and offline marketing solutions will get the best results.

I'm trying to create some basic packages to offer right now and that's why I was asking. I want to integrate a greeting card program with the e-zine. I certainly intend to do it for myself, but I want to offer it to my prospects as well.

Which is why I was asking. I hope that clarifies things.

Michelle

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DogScout

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Nightengale

Michelle

For some clients it is appropriate, for an other it may not be. The largest mistake I find being made is that some off-liners are selling commodities and services that are geared toward generating more clients for businesses that can't handle the ones they have. I am pretty new at this 'game' so maybe Andy or Andrew will have a better insight to all of this than I do, but I have found in many cases, the client, although he THINKS he needs more clients, is not even utilizing the ones he has!

I spent a bit of time doing the traffic thing for a client just to find out that the phone is answered one out of ten times; nine times out of ten it goes to voice mail! out of 100 calls he gets maybe 3-4 messages. (And he never calls them back... meanwhile the business is empty!) That means 96 people are calling his competition (who I checked and they do answer their phone). He could pay me thousands of dollars to get him traffic, but if he doesn't know how to handle what he has, what's the point?

If you are unwilling to open your mind and help the business where the help is needed and think that adding an AR or SEOing the site for a few keywords is helping the business, Someday maybe you can write a blog post like was linked to here earlier today. If you don't care about the business you claim to be helping and the owner is not astute enough to figure it out, you just going to sell a couple of what in the end will be useless products and move on?

Maybe it is me. Maybe I don't 'get it'. All I know is if I am going to get someone to call the place, the phone IS going to be answered. If I need to spend 4 hours of my time to train the businesses staff how to answer a phone, that is what I am going to charge him for. His profits will go up in one day! Then next month the owner has $1500 to spend with me instead of $700. When the business is maximizing the revenue of it's existing customers, then we can work on getting new ones. (And though I was told the budget was $700/mo, now I am getting a check for $1500 a month!)

I am not saying ignore Google,Bing and Yahoo, but with 'Caffeinated Content', and I know they are serving different results now by IP, because I tested it. Optimizing for one household de-optimizes it for another (and hardly any overlap in results!). Infrastructure and I am guessing social media are coming more and more into play. (The social media guess is a comeplete guess. I know infrastructure works, been in business in the 3D world long enough to know that.)

The bottom-line (for me) is results. If the business NETS more, what I am doing is working; if it doesn't, merely grosses more and/or the net stays the same, why hire me?

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marciayudkin

14 years ago

They're selling consulting services and the only reason they even have a website is that people expect it and they want people to get the basic info about them and how to contact them - they're not selling anything from the site and they have no intention of doing so - the fact that marketers always want to try and squeeze in some 'IM' strategy they're convinced everyone should do is the reason they like me - I only care about their business and their ethos - if they don't want to sell anything from their site -I don't even bother trying to tell them otherwise - I help them in other ways.

This comment reminds me of the saying that if all you have is a hammer, you tend to think everything is a nail.

Andy, kudos for accepting the fact that different kinds of businesses use the web differently. It's true. The other day I wrote a press release for a company whose web site was so vague and horrible it was hard to understand how they got any new customers. But mostly they got customers through referral, from an aggressive sales force and from presentations at trade shows. As you say, they don't expect their site to generate leads.

On the other hand, I've also run across a lot of clients whose site functions like that, and it works for them until their industry is in such a downturn that they have to be more proactive about bringing in new business, and in that instance, they understand for the first time the benefit of turning their web site into a lead generating tool.

Marcia Yudkin

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Nightengale 14 years ago

EXACTLY!

I intend to position my online marketing services as a lead-generating tool. (Overall, I think the #1 mistake most businesses -- large and small -- make online is using their website as an online brochure instead of a lead-generating tool.) Yes, I can do other things, but nearly every business right now needs new leads. The downturn in the economy has made online marketing very attractive to a lot of businesses and more people will be open to it.

I'm confident from that perspective, but I'm just trying to wrap my head around creating to basic packages of services for prospects which can then be customized. That's all.

Originally Posted by marciayudkin

...in that instance, they understand for the first time the benefit of turning their web site into a lead generating tool.

Marcia Yudkin
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Selling Online Services to Local Offline Businesses

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