There are two things that can kill a business quickly: selling a product no one wants to buy or not marketing it properly. If you have an amazing product, great for you. It means you only have one job—outreach.
Get out there and tell everyone about your product or service. Email your friends. Text your family and post about your business on social media. Let the world know about your products.
To maximize your exposure, use the right outreach channels. Below are some of them.
Contact Form Automation
When you think about it, almost every website has a contact form. These forms help website owners receive messages from their customers and potential business partners quickly and efficiently.
Now, sending a pitch to every website is tedious. And that’s where automation falls in. By using an AI-powered form filler like form cloud, you can contact hundreds of potential clients in seconds.
The outreach process is straightforward. You find a list of websites you would love to pitch. Next, you draft your pitch on the form filler, and the software does the rest of the work.
Why use contact forms instead of emails? For starters, most people ignore emails from strangers. That means you might have an excellent proposal. But your email will most likely get dumped into the spam box.
By comparison, most website owners read messages sent through contact forms. They know the messages come from customers or clients. In turn, they need to read and respond to the messages quickly.
Email Outreach
Although emails have a low open rate of 21%, they’re still an excellent way to reach out to potential customers. Here’s why. A lot of people consider emails to be the best way to pitch a business idea.
So, how do you craft your email in a way that will convert your leads into customers? Learn everything you can about your lead. What do they like? What problems do they have you can solve?
Use what you know about your clients to make them open your first email. Compliment their products and services. Or, ask them if they’re facing a particular problem? Then ask them to respond to you.
Essentially, you want your first email to be a way of creating rapport. Create a connection with the lead so that in your next email, you’ll feel more comfortable pitching your services and products.
Blogging
A blog is one of the biggest investments you can make as a business. It helps you reach out to people who already love what you sell. Let’s say you have a drop shipping website.
You can post product reviews, how-to guides, and comparison posts to help customers who are at different stages of the buying process. You can also use your blog to create a loyal fanbase. Then you can turn them into regular customers.
That being said, the only way you can find customers by blogging is by creating quality content and marketing your content. This means you must network with other blogs and use social media to create awareness about your content.
Of course, the more people view your content, the higher the likelihood they will visit your website and buy your products. On the bright side, blogging can help you find long-term customers. That’s because your content can keep directing people to your site as long as your website ranks for the right keywords.
Social Media Outreach
This may sound obvious, but social media is a great place to find clients. Think about this. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have more than four billion customers in total.
Unless you target people who really hate social media, chances are that most of your customers use social networks regularly. Reach out to them by having a presence on all major networks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok.
Use your social media handles to promote your business. However, don’t be too promotional unless you’re offering discounts. Prioritize informative and entertaining posts. This helps increase engagement, in turn helping you reach a wider audience.
Speaking of which, consider boosting your posts through social media ads. You see, it’s hard to grow a Facebook or Twitter account when it’s new. But with a little boost, you can get your message in front of 1,000, 10,000, or one million people.
Exposure to a wide audience even temporarily can have a magical impact on your business. For example, you can collect the email addresses of potential clients. Then you can market your products to them through email.
LinkedIn Outreach
LinkedIn isn’t like any other social network out there. It’s a platform where people meet to network, and look for employment or clients. This makes it an excellent place to find potential clients.
In the usual style, you need a plan to help you narrow down your clients’ list. Secondly, look for a tool to automate the process. Automation helps you save time and reach a wider audience.
But beware, you don’t want to send the same message to everyone on your list. Figure out how to personalize your outreach messages. This will help you create a positive first impression and encourage your recipient to contact you back.
As we mentioned earlier, use your first message to establish a rapport. Experts call it warm pitching. It’s meant to establish a network with your leads. This way, the next time you pitch them a business idea, they’re more likely to listen to you.
Cold Calling
Cold calling used to be the most popular outreach method in the past. But it has since been replaced by newer, more effective outreach methods. To provide perspective, you need to make over 200 calls to win one client. That’s an incredibly low success rate.
That being said, cold calling still has a purpose in the marketing environment. For example, you can send your first message through a web form or email. Once you establish a connection with your lead, then ask them if you can call them to close the deal. Most people will pick up your calls if they’re also interested in doing business with you.
