Customer Acquisition – Hunting or Harvesting Leads
Most small businesses go hunting to find that next new customer. Meaning that they put either a lot of energy, money or both into finding their next customer. When we say hunting we mean you are cold calling prospects, knocking on doors trying to find that one in ten opportunity that you are looking to land. In most cases, you won’t be sure if the person you talk to is even a potential buyer or not.
In general this is where marketing helps, there are those who can easily find new leads and those that have to work harder. If you are harvesting leads than you have your pickings and have probably spent your time working on your prospecting or lead generation strategies so new customers find you without you having to go out and look for them. Sometimes this technique is referred to as inbound marketing and involves producing distributable content. If you spend some time creating useful resources that are not overtly sales pitches, you can attract potential customers easily. In other words, they do not look like sponsored articles you have probably seen in magazines and newspapers, but instead provide useful information, such as benchmarks, market research, and even checklists.
If you put the time into creating these “satellites” people will find you and you will spend less time hunting for interested new customers.
Lets try to illustrate this concept using an example, let’s say I am looking to find a home inspector for my new home that I am considering. I will probably try to find information on local inspectors in my area. If I go to my favorite search engine and type in “home inspection checklist in california“., assuming I know nothing about inspecting a house I would probably be seeking out this information.
Now put yourself in the position of a home inspector in knowing that consumers are looking for information. Your satellite marketing could include a list of homes damaged due to local conditions such as drought, or heat, etc. You could provide guides on what to look for when walking through your house or even how to choose your inspector carefully.
At first glance these informational products might seem trivial, however, if you think about it people looking to buy and those who are close to making a purchase will be reading these types of resources. If you have written them in such a way to make your business sound legit and knowledgeable then you will have customers contacting you when they are ready to make the next step and will identify themselves as a new lead.
Things to Keep in Mind
- Remember to ask how your new lead found you so you can focus your energy on effective resources
- Try to maximize the usefulness of your resources. Think about who may want to distribute this information, such as real estate agents who already are a trusted source of information, etc.
- Searching LinkedIn, forums and twitter conversations, you can usually find people looking for help or information.
- Record where possible who you sent information to, or if they asked for a consult. You may not have thought of this as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) but it really is fundamental to continuing your conversation with a prospective new customer.
- Videos travel fast on the internet, and also are shared frequently. If you can record a few videos 2 minutes or less in length on specific tips related to your industry you will have access to an estimated 100 M visitors per month on YouTube watching videos. You may not have realized there are a lot of educational related videos and tutorials on YouTube. All of these videos link directly back to you and establish yourself as an expert.
If you try to adopt this simple satellite marketing technique in your marketing more people will find you rather than trying to buy advertising in your local newspaper where new customer potential may be limited.
Image Credit: foxypar4 (via Flickr)
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