Whether you’re doing online marketing or offline marketing, you want to find who your target audience is. There’s no point in doing a mailing to an entire neighborhood. The odds are the entire neighborhood doesn’t have bad credit.
Not every house inside of it would. Not enough of a percentage would need credit repair assistance, for you to market to a whole town, or a whole neighborhood.
Sniper marketing is different from that shotgun approach. A shotgun approach sprays, and you hope that you hit someone. Sniper marketing, you’re doing more research. Do more research on who needs your services, or who the potential referral partners could be.
Once you have the information, there are a variety of ways to go about it. Look online for the different associations. Look online for the different associations based on mortgage lenders, accountants, CPAs, financial planners, attorneys, automotive dealers.
Once you’ve databased the different associations, then you can simply find the local members and the chapters, and create the database, if you’re doing business to business.
If you’re doing business to consumer, then you would want to get a little bit deeper, and speak directly to potential referral partners who come in contact with people who have bad credit.
You can buy lists of people who shop in certain stores that may have bad credit. You can also buy lists from different list brokers, of people with credit scores ranging in certain ways.
Once you develop your sniper marketing list, then you can connect via direct mail, or phone calls, or post cards, that way you have multiple touches. No one concept is going to be the cure all, just like no one concept in disputing tactics is going to be the cure all. So a combination of online and offline techniques is going to be what’s most effective.
You may want to start by sending someone a postcard. There are a couple of reasons why I say start with a post card. One, because you’re really checking the address to see if they’re still there. You don’t want to send an expensive mail piece, something that cost you a couple of dollars, to an address that you know is bad. So, a post card is almost like a qualifier.
The post card isn’t a standard post card. You’d want the post card to have some sort of marketing message that draws them to your website to get some information about you, or to get some information that can help them. A free report, a white paper, something different. Something with a headline.
Every marketing piece you have, every sales piece you have should have a headline on it: “Seven Steps to a seven-twenty credit score in seven days or less.” That’s a great headline, but of course, it’s not true.
You can’t help the overwhelming majority of people to get to seven twenty in seven days or less, so it’s deceiving, but “Seven steps to the fastest credit score increase in seventy days” is better than seven, because it’s more accurate.
Now, after a post card, you may want to follow up with a phone call. If you have permission to market to the person, because they opted in, you may want to follow with an email and a fax.
You may want to follow with another piece of mail, and get creative in sending the types of pieces of mail that you’re sending out. Send boxes. Send watermelons. Send trash cans. Send amazing things to get responses from people. Yes, you can send all those things through the mail. And the odds are, if you send someone a trash can, they’re going to respond to you because they’re curious what crazy person has sent them a trash can.
If you want to do business with someone bad enough, you’ll spend the money to get their attention. You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars per person, but you have to figure out what each one of those people are worth, and what you’re willing to pay to get their attention. And then, once you’ve targeted your list, and you’ve consolidated your list, you can act like a sniper and zone in on that target and keep shooting them until you get their attention.
Send piece after piece after piece after piece after piece, and don’t stop after three, four, or five. Keep going after six, seven, eight, nine, or ten, keep going until you get their attention or they ask you to stop. Eventually they are going to contact you for something. Your response rates will increase exponentially based on the number of mailings that you do to the individual.
You should be creating videos about everything that you do, and audios about everything you do. Remember that your customers are attracted to marketing based on different means as well. Be aware of that fact and utilize as many of the different marketing techniques that we spoke about to expand your business to whatever level you want to take it to.
Teaching workshops, classes, and continuing education courses and seminar marketing is one of the most effective ways to build your brand and reach new people. The old clichés about “teaching to learn” are with us for good reason – they’re completely true! By constantly putting yourself in front of new audiences and opening yourself up to their questions, you will accelerate your learning curve and became an expert faster.
No matter what kind of marketing you’re doing, following up is the most important part. These live events are a great opportunity to get people’s contact information.
Finally, don’t expect results right away. Marketing a new business inevitably creates a “Snowball Effect,” and the slow trickle of responses you get early on will develop into a steady stream of referrals, phone calls and emails. Be persistent!
Read everything you can, study the competition, and make sure you’re open to keep learning. Good luck in your marketing.
