Is your website helping you to build your business?
It should. This is one of the most important purposes your website serves. There is one very particular way in which you need to ensure your website does this for you.
It’s your list that matters.
Your website must help you to build your list of people and organisations interested in knowing more about you and your work. This list will become one of your most important business assets.
This list is different from lists you might buy or the list of people who have done business with your organisation. This is a list of people who are choosing to get in touch with you and to keep in touch with you.
They are already in your customer pipeline. They are already moving towards doing business with you.
How can you get people to choose to join your list?
You need to entice them to sign up for your e-newsletter.
I use the word “entice” deliberately. You are asking visitors to your site to part with valuable information: their names and their e-mail addresses.
You are also asking them to part with something else. That is their permission to allow you to contact them on an on-going basis.
You need to offer something of value in return for this. One way to do this is to produce an e-newsletter that employers will value. The question is how to make your newsletter of interest to employers.
What have you got that employers want?
When you start to think about the value you can offer to an employer, don’t immediately think about your training programmes, qualifications and short courses.
It’s much too early in the relationship to even think about selling something, but it isn’t too early to think about offering useful advice to employers about the issues that concern them.
The offer to supply a newsletter is an offer to send useful hints and tips to employers. It is not an offer to send information about the provider organisation, which learners have gained NVQ or who has been appointed to your organisation’s staff. It is not an offer to send sales messages to people on a regular basis.
You will want your readers to come to think of you as people who have the answers to difficult questions. You want your readers to come to think of you as problem solvers and people worth knowing.
This means the content of your newsletter must cover what employers want to hear about – the issues facing their organisations and how to deal with them.
Why is this important?
Client attraction marketing is all about getting business to come to you.
People seek out organisations which they think can help them to solve their problems. They seek out organisations that they already know, like and trust when they come to make purchases.
Through your newsletter you can help employers to get to know you. You can help them to be confident that you can help them. You can also start to cultivate and nurture a relationship.
How does this help you to grow your business?
Many of your new customers will come from your newsletter subscribers. Many of your existing customers will decide to work with you again because you are keeping in touch with them via your newsletter.
Producing such a newsletter will take time, effort and commitment. However, a good newsletter could become an important component of your marketing. That’s why it’s worth doing well.
What sort of an e-newsletter should you produce?
People often say they struggle to get a newsletter out regularly. They produce a publication once every three months or so and they struggle to find material to go into it. You need to adopt a different approach if your newsletter is going to succeed in its task of bringing in business and helping you to gain repeat business.
You must get your name and your expertise in problem-solving in front of your employers at least every four weeks, if you are going to be remembered. You must send out a newsletter at least monthly, more often if you can manage it, if your employers are going to think of you as people who can help them when they need help.
You must also spend time and effort on making employers believe that your newsletter is really worth reading.
Does your e-newsletter add value to the employer?
- Are there interesting pieces of information in the newsletter that employers will want to read?
- Does your newsletter contain the sort of information that an employer will want to pass on to others?
- Is your newsletter so interesting that employers will forward your newsletter to other people?
And the result?
If the long run you will attract more business.
Thus, in the modern era of electronic communications and social media, one of the most important things your website can do for you is to get people to sign up for your e-newsletter.
You can go here to sign up for our e-newsletter.
This is the fifth post in a series of ten about client attraction basics.
See also:
Are you turning business away?
Will they remember you?
