Professional Service Firm Marketing Tips & Strategies

Do You Have a 15 Second Pitch?

Do you have an effective 15 second pitch? Or what my fellow Duct Tape Marketing Coach in Connecticut calls a One Breath Commercial?

If you don't have a 15 second pitch or you're not happy with the one you have, head on over to 15SecondPitch.com. Use their PitchWizard to write a clear concise pitch. Sign up for a free account to store your pitch and be able to quickly send your pitch to prospects.

The free account includes a Pitch Assessment to get feedback on your pitch.

You can even order PitchCards, an interesting alternative to the standard business card.

Here is an example of what a pitch looks like:

Got your pitch down? Send me a copy, I'd love to "hear" it.

How To Burn Your Marketing Budget Without Really Trying

Tales of woe regarding small business direct mailing campaigns are all too common. Recently, a fellow Duct Tape Marketing Coach in Missoula Montana shared a story she heard from a prospective client regarding a failed direct marketing campaign. Here are some of the relevant numbers from the campaign:

• Number of pieces mailed: 9,800
• Response: 1%
• Inquiries: 97
• Number of prospects phoned to qualify: 67
• Cost of qualifiying: $29 times 67 - $1,943
• Qualified leads – 13
• Campaign costs = $10,000
• Cost per lead: $918.69

I don't have the numbers of final conversions and sales, but since the company's average sale is approximately $850, it's fair to say this was not a successful campaign.

This scenario plays out all too often and leads many small business owners to think "marketing just doesn't work for my type of business".

I don't know all of the details about the campaign mentioned above, but during the discussion, I recognized some common mistakes that you should work hard to avoid in your next direct mail campaigns. Here are a few:

1. Failing to use a well researched, narrowly targeted list. Of course, in order to do that you have to have a clear picture of your Ideal Customer Profile.
2. Sending one batch of mail and then stopping. In order for your campaign to be effective, you will need to follow up. Follow up with both additional mailings as well as telephone calls.
3. Failing to test. Rather than sending out one huge mailing, send out some smaller, test batches. Test different layouts, messages, call to action, etc. Find the most successful one and send that one to your complete mailing list.
4. Failing to have strong call to action. Make sure to include a strong incentive for your prospect to contact you and begin the process of getting to Know, Like, and Trust you.

Direct mail campaigns, done correctly, can be a very powerful tool for small business marketing. One of it's strengths is the ability to directly measure the effectiveness of the campaign - a must for small business owners.

The secret to burning through your marketing budget without really trying is to perform random marketing activities without tying them to an underlying strategy.  So if you want to have a successful direct mail campaign, start with a sound marketing strategy.

Small Business Marketing Unleashed

If, like me, you were unable to attend the Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference, you can still keep in touch with what's going on at the conference. Here are a few links to some of the bloggers who are blogging about the conference sessions.

Over on SBSfaq.com blog, Wayne Small has done a great job of recapping the conference sessions.

WebProNews is posting some session videos.

Here is a link to David Wallaces recap of the Link Building session and the Paid Search Advertising session.

These are just a few of the people that are blogging about the event. Did I miss your favorite? Leave a link to your favorite SMB Unleashed blogger in the comments.

StartPath - Helping Kansas City Startups Succeed

Here's an interesting group that I learned about through one of my networking connections. StartPath will provide a roadmap for technology, innovative, or life science entrepreneurs from start to profit.

Started by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, StartPath aids the entrepreneur and investor communities by providing a framework for nurturing startups, connecting entrepreneurs with mentors, and teaching startups how to effectively communicate with investors.

On May 1st, StartPath will be sponsoring another startFEST event. startFest is a social gathering that helps entrepreneurs foster relationships with other growth-oriented entrepreneurs, with innovative companies, and with members from the investment community.  For more information and to RSVP for startFest, click here.

Back to BCM after playing with CRM Live

I've been quite here about Outlook with Business Contact Manager (BCM) for a while because I had been playing around with Microsoft's CRM Live early access edition. There were lots of things that I liked about CRM Live, but I've decided to delay implementing it in my business. The per user license fee is very competitive (between $39 - $59 per month) but in my mind it's not really "per user - on demand" as there is a 5 user minimum and a 12 month commitment (with a penalty for early termination). I'm not saying the functionality isn't worth the price, I just wish they'd call it what it is.

I think the $200 - $300 per month along with the 12 month commitment may give some true small business owners some pause (thats' before spending time implementing it), so I think I'll continue to post about using BCM for a while. I do think that as soon you have a remote employee who needs CRM functionality for their job,  you should take a serious look at CRM Live.

After reinstalling BCM, I found this tip via the SBS Diva Blog about throttling SQL memory. I followed the recommendations in this post about 3 days ago and so far I haven't experienced any of the mysterious system pauses that I've reported before.

Coaching Excellence Series Features David Allen, author of GTD

This month, the Duct Tape Marketing Coaching Excellence Series features David Allen author of the extremely popular Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life

This teleseminar is sponsored by the Duct Tape Marketing Coach network. Attendance is free, but space is limited. Click here to register for this event.

8 Critical Factors for Business Success Workshop

Here is a great educational and networking opportunity for those of you in the Kansas City area. In addition to their regular monthly meeting, the Small & Home Business Connection is holding a workshop next Wednesday. Michael Charest will present his workshop on the 8 Critical Factors for Business Success. Michael will follow up this workshop by presenting Sales and Marketing Is Fun during the regular monthly luncheon.

Michael Charest is a nine-year veteran personal and business coach, consultant, author, and speaker. He is president of Business Growth Solutions, a company specializing in coaching clients to success. He has helped thousands of small business owners grow their businesses and their lives. His current speaking program is entitled, “Successfully Selling & Marketing Your Services in an Ethical and Dignified Manner,” or Sales & Marketing Is Fun! He wrote and published, “From Grunt to Greatness…A different kind of self-help book” in October 2005.

The workshop is a steal at $20 for members and $30 for guests. Save $5 by registering online. For more details about the workshop and to RSVP, visit the SHBC web site.

Salina CPA Firm Makes Top 100 List

Congratulations to Kennedy and Coe, LLC for making AccountingToday's Top 100 Firms. Kennedy and Coe is headquartered in Salina, KS (where I went to high school) and has Kansas locations in Garden City, Goodland, Pratt, Topeka, and Wichita. They also have locations in Greeley and Lamar Colorado.

Kennedy and Coe is the only Kansas based firm to make the list. Click here for a copy of the report (registration required)

Create Invoices With Zoho Invoice

The folks at Zoho continue to add to their suite of online applications with their recent addition of Zoho Invoice. Zoho Invoice allows small business owners to:

• create and send branded invoices, quotes, or estimates
• automate recurring invoices
• track outstanding invoices and payments
• send overdue reminders
• view invoice related reports

Pricing is based upon the number of invoices you send per month, starting at $0 for up to 5 invoices and the most expensive plan priced at $35/month for 1500 invoices. Click here for more details about pricing for Zoho Invoice.

 

You can find a list of all of Zoho's online applications here.

Scheduling Future Posts Using Live Writer & Typepad

I saw that someone came to my blog searching for an answer to this problem and since I ran into the same issue today, I thought I would make a quick post about it.

In Typepad (I'm sure this is common in most blogging systems) you can create a post today but set it to be published in the future. You do this by setting the "publish on" date. This is a handy way to create a bunch of posts and schedule them to be "released" throughout the week.

This feature doesn't appear to work when you create your post in Live Writer. Even though you can set the publish date in Live Writer, when you publish the post to your Typepad account, the post shows up immediately with the future posted date.

This is a little bit of a pain, but what I've been doing to work around this is I publish posts from Live Writer to Typepad as drafts. I then log into my Typepad account to set the date for posts I want to show up in the future.

I really enjoy using Live Writer and wish this scheduling feature would work. If anyone knows how to get the future posts scheduling to work with Typepad, I'd appreciate it if you would leave a comment here.