This is guest post by John Robertson, founder of iOpenWallets.com
Let’s break from tradition for a moment. Let’s stop thinking about repeatable, day-to-day tasks you need taken off your plate to free up time to grow your business. Let’s take a moment and visit some offbeat concepts that can help accelerate the growth of your brand, credibility, presence, and profits.
The following marketing tasks are best delegated to specialist so you can capitalize on their expertise and time. Outsourcing creative small and one-time projects like the following, can create huge effects on your long-term bottom line.
Let’s dive in…
Mystery Shoppers
Whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or not, you need to know what you potential customers go through when they buy from you. This allows you to find any holes in your sales funnels that are leaking customers.
It doesn’t matter if you have an e-commerce store or run coaching programs, when you bring unbiased eyes to your sale process, you can answer a multitude of questions…
- How easy was it for the person to order?
- Did they get confused anywhere?
- What was their experience like when they received what they ordered in the mail?
- What was the experience like when they gained access to the downloads?
- How responsive and professional was any email they got from your company?
- How about on the phone?
Marketing isn’t just about getting your product in front of people. Marketing is a process that happens through each part of each sale, to the end of the lifetime of every customer.
If you can get an objective view about everything in your sales funnel, even potentially the product, then you can find the ways to convert more sales and put more money into your bank account.
Who To Hire: Anyone that will do more than just click buttons to make a purchase with your money. Your outsourcer needs to be able to follow your instructions, fill out the questionnaires you have for them and be able to freely tell you about their experience: the good, bad, and ugly.
Post a job on the freelancing sites. Get someone with a good rating and willing to spend 20 minutes to a couple of hours of their time for $10 – $50. Even if it is a little more, this is worth every penny.
Especially when you test it with more than one person, more than once. Sometimes the first try doesn’t find any problems… sometimes the third does. Worth. Every. Penny.
Mailing Inserts
You know that little two-sided pamphlet stuffed inside the envelope with your monthly bank statement? The one that is either informing you about some new change or trying to sell you another banking service?
That little pamphlet called an insert.
Do you send invoices by mail, deliver something physical each month, or just send something in the mail to your customers’ period? Then you should really be utilizing the power of inserts.
The customers that buy the most, tend to be the ones that recently bought from you.
Knowing that, don’t you think it is a good idea to present those customers with information on another product that would complement their purchase? Even if you already tried up-selling them the exact same service online?
Don’t you think it would be helpful for a new subscriber to your monthly coaching program know you also have a study at your own pace training program available?
What if you don’t have anything else to sell? Try affiliate offers.
Works the same way it would online, expect you create an easy to type in URL from your website that redirects to the affiliate offer (i.e. yourwebsite.com/15off)
Are you starting to see how inserts can make an impact on your bottom line?
Who to hire: Copywriters are perfect for this. You may need someone to do light graphic work to make the pamphlet more… presentable. A copywriter generally just writes the words.
If you can do some light work in Photoshop, you should be able to do what you need on your own. You aren’t looking for artwork, just something that doesn’t look like the plain-white, folded menu from your local greasy spoon.
Then again… sometimes plain-white gets the job done better than anything else.
Forum Posting
Now, let me set things straight from the start…
I’m not telling you to hire someone and have them spam forums about your product and start talking you up, just to talk you up… there is a special place in entrepreneurial afterlife for those people.
Don’t be one of those people.
Instead, let’s say you had a site that sold… fly fishing stuff. Everything a sportsman would need in that department.
Now, let’s say you found someone, besides yourself, who is pretty darn knowledgeable about fly fishing and agrees to do a little freelance writing for you. Let’s say for that writing, you pay the freelancer to go onto fly fishing forums and answer any questions folks may have in general about fly fishing.
It doesn’t matter if it is related to something you sell or don’t sell, their job is to be as helpful as possible on a couple/few popular fly fishing forums. Pushing your site’s products come second place.
At times, when your freelancer does answer a question that pertains to something you sell, wouldn’t it be nice if they said “Over at yourwebsite.com/hooks, we sell a 10ga treble hook that should really help with your rock catching problem.”
See where I’m going with this?
Your team member isn’t being disingenuous. They really think that hook will fix the other person’s problem. The company that pays him just so happens to carry the solution the person needs.
The key to all of this— you have someone that is knowledgeable in your niche, which is representing your company, and is actually helping your target audience with their problems.
This builds credibility and goodwill.
Creditable people say creditable things. Creditable people are hired by creditable companies. Creditable companies sell creditable products. Know what I mean, Vern?
Side note: When you setup the account your freelancer will use, make sure there is a link to your site in the signature. The signature that gets automatically printed at the bottom of each answer they leave.
Even when your freelancer isn’t plugging your stuff, there might be some traction to your site through the link. Not to mention the niche-specific backlink to your website built-in with each post. #seowin
Who To Hire: Really anyone with a good background in your niche. You need someone that can lead people to sales… but, the more importantly, you need someone that can actually be helpful to your target audience. That leads to sales.
Put up a job in the writing section and sales/marketing section of freelance sites describing what you are looking for. Emphasize that the knowing the niche at a near passionate level is a must.
Create A Useful App
Before your brain shuts down, this doesn’t have to be something complex. The app just needs to be useful for your target audience.
For example, if you sell weekly recipes, you could have an app created that creates a weekly shopping list for those recipes. Not to mention it is a pretty kick-butt shopping list app that is useful even if the person using it didn’t know about your recipes.
If you teach fly fishing, have an app built that will show feeding habits of different fish; along with graphics of their favorite spots to feed in a river or lake. If someone stumbles across this in the app store and finds it useful, don’t you think they’ll see what else the creators of this helpful app can show them about catching more fish?
Teaching entrepreneurs how to land clients over the phone? Create an app that will run a script during the conversation to help direct the conversation to closing the deal.
Don’t limit your app creation to target existing clients. Your app will make much more of an impact when it is available for anyone to download, paid or free. When anyone can download the app, it makes it easier for someone to say “You have to get this app!”
And there’s your brand… on every screen… even people that would have never thought about you and your service before.
Who To Hire: A marketing strategist would be the best to get the concept of the app planned out for you and maximize the effectiveness of impact on your target audience. Once the outline is in place, you’re going to need a programmer to bring it all together.
Newsletter Creation
Paper.
I’m talkin’ actual, real deal, feel-it-in-your-hands paper.
As in 2 to 6 pages of highly relevant information, delivered to your target audience’s mailbox… with some sort of frequency.
How many people are doing that in your niche? (Get email out of your head already)
This newsletter could have content that is specifically targeted to the top people/businesses you want to work with. The people that you know can benefit the most from your services and allows you to gain a higher and higher caliber of clientele.
These newsletters could also be used for keeping yourself on the minds of your past, most profitable customers… encouraging them to use your services again.
You could use a newsletter for ongoing clients as an incentive with the juiciest information your niche has to offer. Use it as a bonus or paid subscription. Depending on the niche, you can really charge good money for a monthly newsletter when the information inside it pays for itself.
Ink-and-paper newsletters can easily pay for themselves in many ways.
Who to hire: Copywriters are perfect for this. The purpose of this newsletter is to not only inform, but to create interest in your company and what you have. You need a writer that will inspire action.
I’d like to say you can just get any writer for this, but you need a writer with a marketing and sales background… and that’s a copywriter.
There Are Plenty More Offbeat Things To Delegate…
As a marketer and copywriter, I have employed and seen these tactics and so many more. I have personally “fallen victim” to some of these tactics too. I’ve routinely watched myself and loved ones get wrapped up in reading something packaged with their expected delivery… and then buy what they were reading about.
My father gets a monthly newsletter by virtue of paying a yearly fee to a historical society. He looks forward to each issue. I have personally bought something that was recommended in a forum, just because the person had credibility.
Plain and simple… this stuff works.
None of the examples I gave should be used as scripture. These suggestions may not even come close to the needs of your business… and that’s okay. This article was written to help you think outside the box .
Not only with your marketing, but with everything you delegate in your business.
If you are ready to delegate creative ideas like these into your business, I highly suggest you sign up for Deanna’s “Mechanics of Making More” training before you start exploring the world of outsourcing.
During this program, Deanna will show you the 4 critical areas of your biz to streamline before you delegate out any part of your business, allowing you to make more money in less time.
Click here to hire the best team members possible.
John Robertson is a founder of Robertson Direct Marketing. John writes the words and creates the concepts that make people open their wallets. Contact him directly here: john@iOpenWallets.com