Category: Marketing

How to get free sales leads online

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on How to get free sales leads online

One of the hardest things about starting and continuing to run a business is gaining and retaining customers. From small businesses to big businesses we all need customers to make our companies succeed and continue to succeed long into the future.

There are several ways businesses can find customers but very little of those come at no cost. That is why we created FreeSalesLeads.us. FreeSalesLeads.us is a simple-to-use online database that makes finding prospects and customers easy.

With our easy to use layout you can find customers that match your profile in minutes. Users have the ability to narrow their search down within our 14 million plus business leads and 260 million plus consumer leads (further broken down into homeowners or households).

After choosing business or consumer leads, break down your search by geography (ZIP code), type of business, home value, and other demographics to get the perfect sales leads for your business. You will find leads anywhere from homeowners, businesses, insurance agents, relators, car owners, lawyers, medical professionals, and much more.

Once you perfect your search you will gain access to prospects names, addresses and contact information. Each day the total number of prospects available to you resets to keep your flow constant. That’s hundreds of new leads per week!

FreeSalesLeads prides itself on supplying up to date, accurate leads. That is why we guarantee honesty and transparency within our service, reliability through triple-verified and up to date data, and quality leads that will help your company grow.

Getting started is easy and free! Just visit our homepage to start reaching more customers.

Graphic: how to get FSL

Business Growth Strategies

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on Business Growth Strategies
Business Growth Graphic

Growth within a company is vital to its survival. That means constantly evaluating your company to see where there is potential for growth.

Knowing who you are currently targeting will help in your decision for growth. That means you must identify and understand your market segments and target audience (learn how in Increase profit opportunities with STP) before considering the choices for growth.

Once you understand your target market and company impact there are four overall strategies we recommend considering and choosing from to grow your business.

  1. 1. Market Penetration

    Focuses on current products and current markets in order to increase market share. Market penetration requires greater marketing efforts or intensified distribution efforts where the product is already sold. It is the lowest risk growth strategy.

    This growth strategy might be achieved by attracting new consumers to the current target market or encouraging current customers to promote or buy more often from the company. Achieve these strategies by making your current product more appealing.

    Example: Under Armour has consistently focused on selling performance apparel such as athletic footwear, clothing, and accessories. It has fueled its growth by focusing largely on promotion, distribution, and consistency. Under Armour has been very effective at developing inspiring advertisements that feature well-known male and female athletes. [lumen]

  2. 2. Market Development

    Uses the existing product/service and current marketing offering to reach new market segments. It seeks to sell into new markets. Discovering new uses for your product and expanding domestically and sometimes even internationally will help you reach this grow strategy.

    Example: Uber started out as a ride service app that allowed users and users friends to get a ride from point A to point B in whatever ride was offered to them. Since then Uber has expanded to offer Uber Pool (ride sharing), Uber Comfort (newer cars with extra leg room), Uber Black (luxury upgrade) and more to seek a new market of customers.

  3. 3. Product Development

    Offering a new product or service to the current target market. Branch off from your current product/service to offer a new product or service you think the current target market would enjoy and use.

    Example: With environmental concerns growing among consumers, rising gasoline prices and a desire for a reliable vehicle, Nissan developed a new product. The Nissan Leaf became the first electric vehicle. Nissan has remained a leader in the electric vehicle market.

  4. 4. Diversification

    Offering a new product or service to a market segment the company currently does not serve. This opportunity can be either related or unrelated.

    Related diversification means the current target market shares something in common with the new opportunity. Companies might purchase from the same vendors, use the same distribution and management information system, or advertise in the same spot to target markets similar to their current consumers.

    Unrelated diversification means the new business lacks any common elements with the present business. It does not rely on the strengths of the current market or products. It is very risky.

  5. Examples:

  6. Uber started out as a ride service app but has since used diversification to introduce a new product, Uber eats (food delivery on demand).

  7. General Electric began as a merger between two electric companies. Over the years, GE successfully branched out into a wide variety of industries including power and water, transportation, oil and gas, aviation, healthcare, and more.

Make sure you choose the option that is best for your company. Take the time to do research and really understand where your company should go next.

Information gathered from Grewal, Dhruv, and Michael Levy. Marketing. 5th ed., McGraw Hill Education, 2017.

Increase profit opportunities with STP

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on Increase profit opportunities with STP

Segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP), the process that can help you identify and evaluate opportunities to increase sales and profits. Defining and understanding the vision or objectives of the company’s marketing strategy and the mission of the company are key factors before starting the STP process. Using a SWOT analysis, companies can find their mission. A SWOT analysis consists of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Once the company mission is defined, we can go through the STP process.

Steps 1-5 STP process

Let’s dig deeper into what this process means.

  1. Segmentation

    Segmentation breaks customers into groups or market segments. A market segment includes consumers who respond similarly to an organization’s marketing efforts. Each segment will have similar needs, wants, and characteristics. This makes it possible to gear your product or service specifically for them. Developing descriptions of the different segments helps an organization better understand the customers in each market segment. One organization’s product or service can have multiple segments.

    Companies can choose to break their customers down into segments through:

    • Geographic segmentation: organizes customers into groups on the basis of where they live
    • Demographic segmentation: groups consumers according to easily measured, objective characteristics such as age, gender, income, and education
    • Psychographic segmentation: how consumers describe themselves – how they spend their times and money, what activities they pursue, and their attitudes and opinions about the world in which they live
    • Benefit segmentation: groups consumers on the basis of the benefits they derive from products or services
    • Behavioral segmentation: divides customers into groups based on how they use the product or service

  2. Targeting

    This gets even more specific than your market segments. After a company has identified the various market segments for its product/service it then evaluates each segment’s attractiveness and decides which ones to pursue. This narrower focus is called a target market and it’s where the company will spend most of its marketing budget.

    Companies use the following target markets:
    • Undifferentiated targeting strategy, or mass marketing: when everyone might be considered a potential user of its product
    • Differentiated targeting strategy: target several market segments with a different offering for each
    • Concentrated targeting strategy: selecting a single, primary target market and focuses all its energies on providing a product to fit that market’s needs
    • Micromarketing or one-to-one marketing: tailoring a product or service to suit an individual customer’s want or needs

  3. Positioning

    A company must now decide how it wants to position itself within each market. This market positioning involves defining the marketing mix variables so that target customers have a clear, distinctive, desirable understanding of what the product does or represents in comparison with competing products. The positioning strategy helps communicate the firm’s or product’s value proposition, which communicates the customer benefits to be received from a product or service and thus provides reasons to purchase.

Here are some real-world examples of using STP to identify and evaluate opportunities for increasing sales and profits.

STP example graphic

Information gathered from Grewal, Dhruv, and Michael Levy. Marketing. 5th ed., McGraw Hill Education, 2017.

 

Email Marketing Strategies

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on Email Marketing Strategies
Email Marketing Strategies

Email marketing has a two times higher ROI than cold calling, networking or trade shows [MarketingSherpa]. Therefore, emails are an essential part of any marketing strategy. When a business wants to communicate something about its brand or sell its products, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to do so.

80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention [Emarsys]. So, what goes into an effective email marketing campaign? The first thing to note is effort. Without effort, your emails will fall into the bottomless spam folder. With a little effort, you’ll be part of that 80% saying your email marketing helped increase customer retention.

Here are some simple but effective strategies:

  1. Catchy subject line

    People are bombarded with thousands of emails from everything imaginable. What would make them want to open your email? You must grab their attention and keep it long enough for them to want to go open the message.

  2. Be brief and to the point

    Cut right to the point. Again, you want your message to catch their attention and lead them to the main message page. Focus on the point of the email and make sure no matter who is viewing the email the message will be understand right away.

  3. Send relevant content

    If not all your subscribers share the same demographics or interest create groups of recipients to narrow the focus to them. Make the emails personalized, if subscribers are not receiving content they find relevant they will stop engaging.

  4. Mix up your content

    Don’t send the same type of emails all the time. Highlight what your company offers but also share your expertise, your brand values, tip and insights, trends, share information that lets them know more about your brand and community. Not all information has to be created by you either, find topics relevant to your brand, and share top stories and insights from leading professionals.

  5. Follow a Schedule

    If you are sending out a newsletter stick to a schedule. Send out emails the same day(s) around the same time each week, this will allow subscribers to learn your schedule and know when to expect your emails. Also, make sure you aren’t overdoing it. Depending on your target audience don’t overwhelm them with the number of emails you send out.

  6. Use graphics

    Always use engaging content and attractive graphics. These graphics help to attract subscribers’ attention to increase their chances of engagement. Do not, however, rely too much on these graphics to deliver your message. Many emails are set to hide graphics by default.

  7. Occasional offers

    Offer discounts, bonuses, coupons on special occasions from anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays to national donut day (whatever national day/week/month applies to you). Make offers that will gain conversion rate.

  8. Mobile Friendly

    With today’s fast-track world, lots of emails are opened on a mobile device. Mobile opens accounted for 46 percent of all email opens [Litmus] That means your email needs to be optimized for mobile. Without optimizing for mobile readability, graphics and buttons could come across completely wrong. Make subscribers experience pleasant.

Today, there are 3.9 billion daily email users and that number is only expected to rise [Statista]. Start taking advantage of this large market segment with email marketing.