Day 7 – Marketing Arsenal

Staying On Their Mind

You have clients; you have built your database of potential (and influential) clients and other professionals; now you need to consistently keep in touch with them and never quit advertising and promoting your products and services.  The truth is no single advertisement is going to bring in every customer you need to keep your business booming and flourishing as you want it to.   In order to generate the success you want you have to use continued advertising effectively.

For many small to medium-sized businesses, the traditional methods of advertising are not in the budget.  If your company is this size most likely you will not have the resources to hire a public relations or advertising firm to promote everything you need to promote.

Additionally, while a newspaper or magazine ad is a more budget-friendly option, this advertising medium often gets lost in the clutter of all the other ads.    While we would like to think otherwise, we literally could run our ad in a newspaper or periodical a thousand times and there would STILL be potential clients that have not seen it!

Even the smallest yellow pages ad costs almost a hundred dollars a month and had even less optimistic results as the newspaper ad!  Television and radio advertising; the spots most businesses could afford are late night / early morning when most of your potential customers are sleeping.

A great tool to have in your marketing arsenal is a client newsletter.  These are direct, personal and highly effective forms of advertising for small to mid-sized companies.

What Exactly Is A Client Newsletter?

While a client newsletter can come in all colors, shapes and sizes, the easiest definition is any printed sheet, pamphlet or small newspaper that contains items of interest to your current clients and potential customers.   If you send several articles to your clients at the same time – that’s a newsletter!   If you send to them a sheet with multiple listings of your products and services, that’s a newsletter!

While just about anything can comprise your client newsletter there are a few standard items that make-up the average newsletter and they are:

1.  Articles.    If you include well-written articles that relate to your products and services, this will encourage your clients to look more carefully at your materials.

2.   Product Descriptions.    If you have a new product coming out or that you will be making available to your clients put this information in a client newsletter.

3.   Services.   Even if you do not have any new services, it is important that you remind your clients of what you do.   Who knows, in the past they may have not needed some of your key services but as we all know, life changes quickly and what they did not need yesterday, they may need today.

Client newsletters are a familiar marketing tool seen in every industry.  While some companies prepare their newsletters in-house using standard desktop publishing software, others will contract with another business such as a print shop or a graphic designer to arrange to have their newsletter created.

Many practitioners utilize our customized client newsletters such as the one that comes free with your IBP membership.   Additionally, IBP offers Direct Mail services, lettershop and list brokerage services that take the work out of making the client newsletter work for you.

There are also several other services that provide what is referred to as “pre-canned” newsletters.   These types of newsletters are pre-printed with only the business names changed from company to company.

No matter what your content or the format you select or whether you design and produce your client newsletter yourself or hire someone else to do this for you – your client newsletter is continued and faithfully-timed message from your company to your customers.

If done well, your client newsletter can be come the cornerstone to your communication with your client.

What Are the Benefits of a Client Newsletter?

While the benefits of the client newsletter vary from business to business, for the us in the financial industry the most pronounced benefit is the one to our budgets.    For most of the client newsletter provides the most economical return on our investment of time and money spent.  For money-minded individuals that cost to benefit ratio is key. If a client newsletter does not produce a benefit to your business that exceeds the cost and effort it took to produce; it is not your best marketing tool.

For most small businesses a newsletter:

1.    Increases sales and adds new customers by keeping your name in front of your customers and prospects.

2.    Presents a professional image of your business by setting you apart from the crowd.    When you send out a newsletter this makes you stand out from the competition in your client’s mind.

3.    Educates your prospects in new ways to take advantage of your services by teaching them or showing them potential ways that they could utilize your services.

4.    Positions you and your company as the experts in your field.   A newsletter allows your reader to see you as knowledgeable and a well-informed resource that is valuable to them.

5.    Shows your clients that you care about them and their needs and that they are more than just a name in your database; they are real people just like you with needs that are very similar to your own.

There is no confusion about the benefits of the client newsletter chiefly being a tool to promote your visibility to your customers and potential clients.    By using a newsletter you will be the first person they remember and think about when they need what you have to offer and they will call you to help them meet their need.

How Effective Is A Client Newsletter?

There is no set in stone method for determining how successful a client newsletter will be for all businesses but a great rule of thumb is that if you have a larger number of potential customers the odds are that your client newsletter is going to be more effective than if you just had a few potential customers.

This fact is why communication with your clients and potential clients is so essential from opportunity to opportunity.    Remember, the client may not have needed the service you offered yesterday, but today their lives are a different story with complex issues that you have the solution for.

Ensure that you are on the short list of the people they know that will meet their need and create a positive business relationship with them that makes you the one they will ask to help them when they need it most.

The effectiveness of client newsletter has been shown to be greater in straight data and numbers than sales letters, company profiles and sometimes, even brochures!  That is very significant information to consider when you are planning and creating your marketing arsenal.

In order to plan for an effective newsletter you want to make certain that your newsletter is informative while at the same time, entertaining.   With so many distractions in life, your client newsletter can become something that your clients actually look forward to reading if it is interesting.

The best newsletters are read, then saved for later us or even better yet – passed around for others to see.    This collective and residual marketing of your client newsletter is what allows your newsletter to bring in much business.

Most clients aren’t going to make a copy of your brochure to and send it out to more prospects, but they will pass around a newsletter.

How Much Does A Client Newsletter Cost?

To reduce the costs of printing a client newsletter you can produce your newsletter in-house, using your computer and laser printer.   Additionally by writing your own articles or using free reprints of articles allows you to keep the expenses at a minimum.

If you are not comfortable with writing and designing your own newsletter, or perhaps you simply do not have the luxury of time to work on this project yourself or with your staff, the best investment you can make is to outsource the project.

You will need the following service providers:

A copywriter

A desktop publisher

A print or copy shop.

There are also many economical preprinted newsletters that sell in bundles of 100 copies or more and allow you to affix your own label and send as well as a single master copy preprinted newsletter that you reprint yourself.

No matter what method you select to get your newsletter marketing tool, always remember that you have to factor in the cost of postage when you are budgeting and planning.

The Proper Look and Form of a Newsletter Article

If you are using a newsletter the wrong way or writing content poorly or displaying it ineffectively – you are wasting your time and your money!   In order for your newsletter to be a big success you need to ensure that your newsletter has the proper look to generate the buzz of interest you desire.

To get that look you need to follow the follow steps:

1.   Write short articles.     If your reader cannot read the article in 15-20 minutes the odds are they are going to ignore what you are saying.

2.    Write directly.   In order to right short, you are going to have to write direct and to the point.   Forget the fluff and flowery phrases and give your reader the key information and then additional information if necessary to produce a more direct and natural conversational style.

Remember that all newsletter articles have these items:

1.    A Title

When creating a title, ensure that the title is catchy and builds curiosity.   Because time is limited most readers will scan material in mere seconds by reading titles to see if something interests them to read further.

2.    An Author

When crediting an author, it is essential to great marketing to make certain that the author’s name and biography are set apart and distinguished from the rest of the text by a box or changes in fonts or typesetting.

3.    The Information

While the title and the author layouts can be formatted to fit into a particular space, the information or the body of the article is going to vary from newsletter to newsletter unless your articles are a set and standard size each time.   The information you provide from article to article needs to be suited for your audience.

If you know that the majority of your readers like longer articles, then format your newsletter to include a longer article that continues from page to page with informative information or advertising sections in between.   Only you will be able to determine what length of article best suits your financial product and your current newsletter topic.

Mailing and Marketing Your Client Newsletter

Before you have your client newsletter completed you have to determine how you are going to mail and market your client newsletter.     IPB offers excellent Direct Mail services that allow you to leave the complicated marketing and the tedious mailing parts of utilizing your newsletter tool up to us.

Ensure that you understand who you want your newsletter to go to and what results you want your newsletter to generate.   Our list brokerage services can help you define who you want your newsletter to go to and we can work with you to help you identify what your main marketing goals and needs are.

For the majority of us it is simply – get more clients and generate more profits.    While newsletters are great for doing those to things they are also a multi-purpose tool that will help you:

Get new clients,

Improve the relationship with your current clients,

Establish your brand,

Provide cross-selling opportunities,

Generate direct fee opportunities that will save clients’ money,

Release press stories,

Build referral network and professional relationships, and

Provide publicity opportunities.

While many of these benefits we will discuss further in upcoming chapters, the real benefit to client newsletters is how it effectively satisfies the purposes you select – no matter what those purposes are.

One Investment Manager I know utilizes his client newsletter to promote direct fee opportunities that allow new and current clients to subscribe to new services at a set fee that not only gives the client a clear definition of costs and expenses but give him a distinct vision of what his revenues will be.

No matter what your goals for your newsletter and the benefit of those goals to you in order to effectively use a client newsletter you need to know your audience, your audience’s needs, and their interests.

Your audience is easy to identify because they are the people who will use your products and services.

Their needs are relayed to you be the feedback you receive from your current clients or what you discover from just observing the general market by reading the newspapers, listening to the news and just think about how a “specific” sort of client would respond to that information and write to that person.

In your article present the current problems that client may be facing and also how you and your financial business are able to meet those needs and resolve the issue.   Make your client newsletter a tool that establishes you as part of the solution, not part of the problem.

BLUEPRINT FOR BUILDING

How you utilize a client newsletter in your practice is up to you and depends on your needs and the needs and interests of your clients or potential clients.

Think about your market and the products that are specific to you and your business and produce a well-designed client newsletter that provides articles and product descriptions to will generate the marketing buzz and get people talking to you and about you in effective ways.

Remember to be direct and write shorter articles for bigger impact and only use longer articles for products or services that require more information in order to hook the client.   Think about what you want your client newsletter to accomplish and to create the newsletter you need to generate your success.

Next Stage- Initiating Your Electronic Marketing

With the market changing minute by minute – how do you keep up with the increases in technological advances and trends that pull your potential clients in a multitude of directions?

In the next chapter, learn how to make a website generate leads and rank you among the best in your business using SEO content, Google Local and other tech tools that make the most of your marketing to make the most of your products and services.