As a credit repair business owner, there are many ways for you to market your business. One of the most effective ways is to team up with people and professionals who interact with consumers with credit problems.
To make a short list of some of those people, who interact with clients with credit report problems, think of mortgage brokers, banks, real estate brokers, automotive dealerships, loan officers, bankruptcy attorneys, insurance companies, and financial investment companies. That’s just a short list of some of the people who interact with clients that have bad credit, or clients that got denied for credit.
There are many ways to interact with that group, which we will call “affiliates.” Affiliates are referral partners of people that can refer clients to you on a consistent basis. It’s a much better marketing strategy to go after one person that can refer fifty people to you, than to focus your efforts in going after each one of those fifty one at a time.
An ongoing marketing effort to nurture and mature relationships with referral partners must stem from a position of authority first. In order for anyone to do business with you, they must learn to know you, like you, trust you, and hopefully respect you, and respect your opinion.
That takes time to build, and there are many things you can do to help develop those relationships. There are many tools to help you speed up those relationships.
One of the things that you can do, that’s very effective, is to write small articles about different things in credit that you learn about that could affect their clients. In those small articles, you can send them out to the people that are inside your list, through email, snail mail, post cards, letters, different mediums. Or, even have an article written in your local newspaper or trade publication.
It could be extremely helpful. It positions you as an expert. Another thing you should consider doing is actually writing a book. Believe it or not, you can write a book fairly easily (but we’ll discuss that in another email).
Once you’ve written a book, it’s very easy to get appointments to talk to professionals, by being the author. Once you’re the author, you have an authoritative marketing position, an authoritative market approach that many of your competition will not have.
And, it sets you apart from being looked at as the “credit repair guy.” You don’t want to always be looked at the “credit repair guy or gal.” You want to be looked at as the expert in credit that assists clients and changes consumer’s lives.
One way to establish, and start to establish, relationships with different entities is going to networking groups, networking meetings, BNI is an organization that has networking groups pretty much worldwide. The Chamber of Commerce is a great place to start. Local community groups usually have networking functions.
You may want to also consider teaching a workshop or class on the basics of credit. You can teach on the credit algorithm what encompasses a FICO score, in a twenty- to thirty-minute class.
You may want to teach that class for a mortgage company for first-time home buyers. You may want to teach that class at a local community college or university, a Chamber of Commerce function, a local community center, a YMCA center, local men’s groups, local women’s groups.
You may want to teach at churches, clubs, local associations, or even speak to your local talk radio or university radio show, and see about presenting it on the radio. We’ve had many successful clients take basic information and transform it into hour-, two-hour, or three-hour-long radio shows, with questions and answers about credit. They instantly become the local credit expert, and they will get a lot of business.
If you focus your business efforts on giving, before you ask for anything in receipt, you’ll find yourself in a constant flow of referrals, and a constant flood of people who want to do business with you. So focus on what information you can give, and how do you can share your knowledge with more and more people, you’ll get a ton of business out of it in the long run.
Some other ways to associate and create relationships with people is to create gift certificates. You can create a value-added gift certificate to give out to certain professionals. When creating gift certificates, I don’t suggest that you give out a stack of them to anyone. You want to give one or two out to the professional that you want to do business with.
Make the certificate look of extreme value, that you’ve paid a significant amount of money and that it’s not something you freely give out to anyone. Don’t do it in a networking meeting, going around to hand everyone a gift certificate, because that makes it valueless.
In presenting a gift certificate to a prospect that’s a potential referral partner, you would create something of value, a $50 or $100 off your fee, a no set-up fee. Whatever the value might be, make it substantial. Make it count. Only give one or two out to professionals that you want to talk to.
When you go to give it to the professional that you want to do business with, you can explain to that professional that this is something of true value. You’ll look forward to potentially doing business with them, but you understand that they want to, and need to, vet and research anyone that they choose to align themselves with.
So you’ve created a way for them to help one or two of their clients, risk free, by allowing you the opportunity to assist that client in repairing and restoring their credit. With repairing and restoring their credit, you’ve now helped them and allowed them to do that free of charge, which is something that makes them look extremely good. It’s a real value at that point, and you’re finding a way to get clients into the door.
