How I've been getting lots of clients from trade publications...

by Bill Jenkins Banned
13 replies
Hey Warriors,

I want to give you my experience with trade publications in regards to getting offline clients.

I've done everything from direct mail, to ppc, to cold calling and more to get new clients. The odd thing I notice is the different quality of customers different channels produce.

For example, with ppc I got good traffic but low conversion rates. Those who did convert generally had a more demanding attitude and wanted a lower price (ie, low end customers.)

Direct mail was more effective (dollar bill letters) and produced a higher quality customer but the lead cost was also higher.

After a lot of testing I've discovered trade publications mimic the traffic quantity of ppc while also producing very high quality leads/customers. It's time efficient as well because you can run just one ad and receive multiple new clients. I've also noticed that clients derived from trade publications are the least problematic and easiest to work with. (direct customer referrals are really good too.)

Most trade pubs are pay-to-subscribe and very niche specific. The first factor eliminates 90% of tire kickers and the second factor gives you a tightly targeted audience making offer selection easy.

If you haven't tried trade publications in your business already I highly recommend it. You can actually use them for all types of marketing and not just offline. But that's another story. I've been dialing in my particular system for years now. You can pm me with questions if you want. But I'm very busy so please keep your questions short.

I know a lot of people have trouble getting new clients. So, I just wanted to share whats been working exceptionally well for me. You really don't have to worry about saturation either because there are just so many trade publications in so many markets and so few real action takers!

Bill
#clients #publications #trade
  • Profile picture of the author MichaelWinicki
    Thanks for starting this thread Bill!

    Where does cold-calling fall for you as far as results?


    OK, can you give any insight into what's working for you when it comes to advertising in trade mags?
    -Are you using small ads or full page ads? (or something in between)
    -What are you offering? Free report? Free consult?
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    • Profile picture of the author Bill Jenkins
      Banned
      Good questions...

      Cold calling falls at absolutely the bottom of my list. I simply hated it and found it very ineffective in comparison the other methods.

      People talk about cold calling all the time and how great it is. But I'd have to ask them... would you rather make 100 phone calls to people who don't want to hear from you and secretly consider you a spammer... or... would you rather place 1 ad in a publication where a tight niche is paying money in pursuit of furthering their business?

      I think the option is clear. I've run ads in trade publications that cost me just over a hundred bucks and brought in 9 new high ticket clients. (they called me asking for my services)

      I prefer paragraph long ads because they're both cheap and effective. You do have to structure them properly to get good impact though. And the great thing is, once you have a winning ad in 1 publication, you can use the same ad in other similar publications. This multiplies your results with little extra work.

      I cant even begin to compare trade pubs with cold calling. There not even in the same universe in my experience.

      Bill
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      • Profile picture of the author MichaelWinicki
        Oh I understand the "Cold Call Beat-Down" Bill. LOL! "Welcome guest" vs. the "Unwelcome pest" thing.

        Just wondered when you were doing it what sort of success you had with it.

        Did you ever attempt farming out that aspect of it (the cold calling)? And then maybe do the calling yourself as they became a "warm lead"?
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  • Profile picture of the author Rus Sells
    Bill, please reply to my PM or your gmail.

    Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author thet
    Your thoughts on cold calling are very interesting.
    Most marketing can be considered spamming by the way. Everything can be if you position it the way you want too.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    Would you be kind enough to show us one of your ads? I've used trade publications before with only mediocre success, far more sales via cold calling than trade publications for me at least. I will say though, that the exception is different business journals. Awesome platform, usually higher distribution as well. Hell of an ROI but difficult to scale up with the same amount of success. I wonder if the trade publications I've used were just a poor choice.
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    • Profile picture of the author MichaelWinicki
      Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

      Would you be kind enough to show us one of your ads? I've used trade publications before with only mediocre success, far more sales via cold calling than trade publications for me at least. I will say though, that the exception is different business journals. Awesome platform, usually higher distribution as well. Hell of an ROI but difficult to scale up with the same amount of success. I wonder if the trade publications I've used were just a poor choice.
      I can see where trade publications would be a great tool for lead generation.

      The problem is as you've pointed out- scaling them up.

      Most industries have one or two trade pubs and once you've placed ads in those then you've saturated that niche.

      If you want faster growth in that niche you would need to also being doing things that are more scalable such a cold calling and direct mail.
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      • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
        Originally Posted by MichaelWinicki View Post

        I can see where trade publications would be a great tool for lead generation.

        The problem is as you've pointed out- scaling them up.

        Most industries have one or two trade pubs and once you've placed ads in those then you've saturated that niche.

        If you want faster growth in that niche you would need to also being doing things that are more scalable such a cold calling and direct mail.
        I agree completely and I think this is where a lot of people either go wrong or get complacent. There's a lot of ways to market and advertise yourself, the best thing you can do is have a diverse strategy of lead generation channels. It's not an either or type of deal for me, it's more like what else can I do that will provide a good enough return?
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        • Profile picture of the author savidge4
          Scaling is a very interesting topic. There are 2 types of scaling there is vertical scaling and lateral scaling. As I see it, most tend to vertically scale. IE they develop a working PPC campaign on Google and simply throw more money at it.

          The flip side of that or lateral scaling is when you have found that success with Google, you then transfer that to Bing, and to facebook, and to solo ads etc.

          Lateral thinking follows through much better in offline marketing and in general, offline business concepts. You get a newspaper ad that works, you don't buy a bigger ad expecting better results, you hunt down other papers to place the same ad in. The same being in trade pubs. you don't make a bigger ad, you transfer the ad to other publications.

          Lateral growth is how offline works. Subway Sandwich shops as an example, they didn't place all their eggs in 1 store, they grew laterally. The numbers when you look at them are staggering to say the least. Vertical profit gain is obtained through lateral growth.

          The flip side of that is a site such as newegg .com They are purely online and growth has had to come vertically. In that same market space you have tigerdirect .com That I am guessing may have hit a cap in growth and has moved from the online vertical to a balance of lateral growth as well. ( offline store locations )

          I personally am a HUGE believer in lateral growth. If you are active in one social media outlet, you should be active in many. In SEO I don't focus, on JUST Google, I work on lateral listings across as many databases as I can IE DMOZ, Yahoo, Bing, Google, Google internationals ( when appropriate ) and a host of more than a few others.

          With all of that said... depending on what you are offering you CAN vertically grow with the use of trade publications. A few years ago I had a Client that made trade show booths. We ran ads in I think it was 6 different publications and get a better than decent return. ( total expense was like $1000 quarterly, with a solid 6 figures in return )

          They obviously wanted to scale that... but the question was how, and the answer became segregating the market space. We ran the original ad, and added a second ad that targeted entry level.

          We took that a step further and broke out a 3rd ad that targeted the hi end market space. This concept at first was not a overwhelming success. In fact it was a dud.
          The thinking was higher end, we need images etc ( bigger ad ). With some manipulation and testing we ended up with the "Nice" ad for the low end market ( that doubled its performance ) and the mid and hi market were text ads.

          Needless to say the client was a bit better than happy overall.

          Anyways hope that helps!
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          • Profile picture of the author MichaelWinicki
            The other challenge with using trade pubs or magazine advertising in general is the long lead time between the time the ad is placed and when the ad is actually seen... You're probably talking between 2-4 months in many cases.

            And then if you're running lead generation type ads, the entire process from ad design to copywriting to ad placement to the ad getting read (and acted upon) to the prospect actually turning into a customer can be very long indeed.

            Again, having a varied approach to prospecting using several marketing tools at once can yield points of opportunity or concern much faster.
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            • Profile picture of the author Rich Roberts
              Originally Posted by MichaelWinicki View Post

              The other challenge with using trade pubs or magazine advertising in general is the long lead time between the time the ad is placed and when the ad is actually seen... You're probably talking between 2-4 months in many cases.

              And then if you're running lead generation type ads, the entire process from ad design to copywriting to ad placement to the ad getting read (and acted upon) to the prospect actually turning into a customer can be very long indeed.

              Again, having a varied approach to prospecting using several marketing tools at once can yield points of opportunity or concern much faster.
              This is a very good point MichaelWinicki because this was one of the reasons I thought that trade publications and other offline publications would take a long time to acquire new leads and customer. This would then make more challenging to scale our campaigns.
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  • Profile picture of the author Skystar
    Couppla other ideas:

    - Trade blogs, many of which might feature your 'ad' as an 'endorsement'
    - Article marketing - very effective (and appealing) to trade media if well written
    - Pay Per Call - Conversions of 50% not unusual. Look at offerweb.com - nice little operation

    We got a bunch of postcards from Las Vegas showing casino tables for a client campaign and printed this on the back: "Don't gamble with your auto warranty .. . . call us .. . " etc. 'Everybody reads postcards - "I wonder who's sending me a postcard from Las Vegas?"
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  • Profile picture of the author XponentSYS
    Dude, I love trad rags. Gotten thousands of clients that way.

    Would run 2-step lead generation campaigns then "back-end" the leads a "web package" tailored to their specific "trade" for a monthly fee.

    6,000 chiropractors......... 3,400 landscapers...... Running an HVAC campaign now, 900 or so so far.
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    "Hybrid Method" Gets 120,846 TARGETED VISITORS
    To Any Site in ANY NICHE!

    NOW FREE IN THE WAR ROOM! CLICK HERE!
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