Who Gets the Cheese? Active Marketing Does.
Your best prospects are the ones that find you because they are looking for the products or services that you offer. In order to capture these prospects you need to actively market to these people. Active marketing is making your website or your business available if someone is looking. Here are some examples of Active Marketing:
This guy is really active.
Search Engine Optimization: SEO is a great form of Active Marketing. By optimizing your site to rank high in the search engines for your chosen keyphrases you are pre-qualifying your site visitors and working to provide searchers the solutions or products for which they are looking.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM): If you pay for placement (or clicks) on a search engine whenever someone types in a certain phrase, (or a phrase from a geographical location), this person is likely to convert on your site. They are obviously looking for you and an ad to them has a higher conversion rate than one directed at the general public, like traditional marketing channels do.
Yellow Pages: Ok this is Active Marketing, in so much as if a prospect is looking for someone to fix their 1987 Pontiac, then they theoretically might open a phone book under “car repair” and find a big colorful picture and choose to then call the business with the biggest ad—but seriously people, the phone book?? Step into this millennia…
Hold/Voicemail Messages: Hold/voicemail messages are the most laid-back (read: cheap) ways to actively market you business. Think about it: If a prospect calls you, they are a pretty qualified prospect! This is an opportunity to tell them about other products/services, or differentiators or special promotions. That said, none of us like to be kept waiting. Keep the message short, interesting, even funny, to hold the interest of the caller.
So next time you are trying to figure out where to spend your marketing dollars, think about actively reaching out to your prospects and giving them what they are seeking.
Got any other recommendations about active marketing? Comment below and join the conversation.
