A short time ago I was lucky enough to interview Lesley Anderson from Hedgerow Marketing on Skype.
We talked about marketing and selling, and how and why people get this so wrong: especially on LinkedIn … and how to get it right.
To listen to the podcast, please click here.
The key points I learned from Lesley were:
- Don’t be tempted to behave differently just because you’re online: people like it best when you behave like a real person, as if you were in the room with them. Think about how you can genuinely help and add value, and how your expertise can be helpful to their situation.
- Never ‘sell’ anything: people hate to be ‘sold to’, no matter how good your product is. The best way to get sales is to add value step by step, and then people will get to know, like and trust you. Then they may contact you and ask if you can do business together … and only then.
- When publishing anything online, the best way to do this is to think of a question that clients often ask you: then you can seek to answer this with a few simple tips. A good way to format your material is often to title it as ‘3 top tips’: this is easy to read and invites interest and interesting replies.
We also talked about how businesses can win and keep clients after they’ve attracted them though their marketing.
She said that in her experience (and in mine too) this can often be a place where businesses let themselves down.
- Smaller businesses because they’re too busy trying to do everything.
- Larger businesses because the systems aren’t right, and things fall down between cracks! (Especially when working remotely online!).
She suggested that often businesses can see marketing as a funnel that you need to pour lots of leads into, in order to get a few sales out of the bottom, But, if you have a very leaky funnel, this can be a very expensive and frustrating exercise: with lots of activity producing marginal results.
So, just as important as excellent marketing is the ability to track every lead and ensure everyone who comes across your business is well cared for and feels valued, whether they buy from you today or not.
I couldn’t agree more!
Far better to have a few leads that are cared for excellently and feel truly valued, than lots of leads who get a disjointed, and often poor, experience.
One more tip from Lesley: if you’re a small business, make sure you’re active on Linked In: it’s the most important social media network for business by far. She suggests that you commit to just 15 minutes a day (small steps!) and aim to do 3 things well.
(It’s always 3 things!)
- Comment helpfully on other people’s posts
- Post a helpful piece of information (3 top tips perhaps?)
- Making connections
The conversation was only 12 minutes long, but really helpful: to listen to it please click here.
Thanks again to you Lesley for sharing your time and helpful information.
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