August, middle of the holiday period, long balmy days, time to relax before you start the grind in September?
NO!!!
While your competition is lazing around on holidays or generally ‘putting stuff off’ until September, this is the ideal time for you to maximise THEIR down time and make great inroads into your target market.
One of the most frequent questions we get asked is how to generate leads for a business. We will often take calls on a Monday in the office where the conversation goes something like this: “We have just checked our work for the week and we need some more leads coming in. Can you do something fairly quickly to get some work for our team?”
The short answer is yes, but this comes with a warning. Traffic to a website, calls to a telephone is never a problem, BUT the more urgent the need is, the more it will cost you. There are only a few ways to bring qualified traffic to your business – and by qualified, I mean that the visitor traffic is looking for a product or service similar to yours and is ready to buy.
You can buy traffic through advertising, pay-per-click, or actually paying for leads. The problem is you are in a ‘first date’ scenario and no matter how much the customer likes you or your offering, they will want to get to know you first before they commit.
How many people actually propose marriage on a first date?
While there is not much data available on this, I would guess the number is very, very small.
So in terms of customer engagement, there you have the first barrier. There have to be a number of ‘touches’ between customer and client before the deal can be proposed, let alone consummated! And not in a speed-dating manner either; slow and steady wins the race here.
Unless there is an absolute, must have it by deadline looming. Then you can have a go at sealing the deal quickly
What about Search Engine Optimisation? Well yes, it’s important, but it is a medium to long term measure as it does take time to establish yourself in the search engines and optimise your site appropriately (and continuously!), not forgetting about content and inbound linking strategies!
So how do you get leads?
The best place is to look in your own backyard – at your existing customers. If they are happy enough to continue working with you then they are the ideal advocates to help you promote your business to THEIR friends and associates. Even creating a referral scheme to reward these customers can encourage a bigger uptake of the scheme.
One thing we have been experimenting with is on online chat service, not just a run of the mill chat service, but one with a significant advantage over the other services out there. For starters the service is UK-based, and not just any old location; it’s right here in the North East with manned stations from 9.00 a.m. until 7.00p.m.
The big issue with Live Chat and pseudo Live Chat (Chat Bots – were a pre-programmed automated answer system handles the conversation) is the lack of knowledge about your business. The system we are looking at is different and is currently working really well in the B2B sector.
The process works like this:
- you complete your frequently asked questions database and choose your chat box design
- Complete 7 core business questions (minimum requirement
- Choose from a range of sector specific, pre-populated and customisable questions and answers
- Add your own expected questions and answers
- Choose your chat box colour
- Upgrade to a custom chat box, add your logo, brand colours with a unique design.*
- Add to website in seconds
*This will incur a small cost
- The provider agents proactively engage with your website visitors, creating an amazing customer experience and generate you hot leads
- Your live chat box automatically appears and engages with your website visitors
- Real people respond within seconds
- All chat agents are UK based
- Answers are based on your pre-approved Frequently Asked Questions database
- Fast customer service, providing answers to questions as your customers have them
- The service develops a strong relationship with your website visitors, quickly building trust in your business
- The service is live when your customers are on your site, even if your business is closed
Best of all you do have a thirty-day no-obligation trial to see if it works for your business – and you don’t even need a credit card to take part.
I will let you know how well it works for us, but if you wanted to have a free trial for your business, then just go here and give it a 30 day test-drive: 30 Day Free, No-Obligation trial of Live Chat