Greetings everyone!
Marketing effectively on low and no budgets requires a humble attitude and knowing and understanding what you are against. No one wants to waste time with people or businesses cash flow poor or seem to be going nowhere. Many minds will be closed to your services or offerings. Notice I said MINDS. (One must have a willing mind to receive and accept.) Your attitude task is to help prospective clients in any way possible, offer your assistance, if they allow you, expecting to receive nothing. A willing mind must accept you and clearly see that your circumstances are temporary, that you are temporarily without cash and start to believe in the services you provide. This is where database marketing is crucial to your business. The most important word in guerrilla marketing is DATABASE.
Keeping a record to track clients, prospective clients, and important deadlines is a must. It keeps you in tune with your clients’ needs. A satisfied client normally is great for spreading how wonderful you are.
Businesses are different and have different needs and uses for the information collected. You will have to decide how, when, and where this information is structured to benefit your business. I will use my experience only for an example.
When I first became marketing manager for a criminal defense law firm many moons ago, I immediately noticed that the information that the firm was paying someone to gather was not being used to its maximum. At that point, I had over ten years of commission sales, sales management, and management experience. I knew that the firm’s bottom line would increase with a few adjustments. Never had I seen a group of people fight change before on any marketing job, especially when profits may increase. After about a year of fighting, I finally did not include the staff, I set-up the database and began using it. One Monday morning, the attorney came to my office closed the door and said, “Show me that thing. We took in five cases this weekend.” The irony of it, the business manager gave everyone a raise that year including her raise, but me. I didn’t complain to the attorney because it was his name on the door, he caught me as I was leaving one day and handed me a bonus. I received a bonus every 90 days after.
The information that the firm was paying to receive was now being tracked. I was able to track trends and properly prepare successful campaigns for popular arrest charges that occurred in different areas of the state. We were able to track who was coming to the county jail possibly to pick-up indictment papers or just been arrested. Usually most picking up indictment papers had already retained counsel and if not, the attorney knew then that a payment plan probably was not possible if they called the firm. The database also helped to increase revenue on some cases. Before a prospective client was allowed to speak with an attorney in the firm, their information could be immediately verified while they were currently on the phone. Sometimes a prospective client had separate cases and charges in other jurisdictions and the information was flagged. The attorney was able to ask the client if he needed representation on those cases along with the one he initially called about. The information that our attorneys could share with prospective clients immediately cemented the attorney-client relationship.
This is just a little information about the power of database marketing. It is important that you create one for yourself and your business. Your needs will be different. I created a prospective database for every product or service I sold or represented from furniture, prestige cosmetics, and had a database for district managers, whether they were my manager or not. Helped me keep up with the politics of the businesses I worked for, equally important. A humble attitude and a well organized database are solid building blocks.
One more thing, gather database information yourself to insure integrity. I know there are great information brokers and lead lists out there, however, how many of your competition purchased the same list? The more competition, the more time and energy you spend on courting prospective clients. Working a watered down list is time management suicide, especially for attorneys.
Always a blessing to share, Dream your World!
For more information about marketing on low or no budget, join my Small Business Marketing group on SweeThorn Information Exchange it is free to join and participate.
http://www.LisaHenry.org or lisa@lisahenry.org
