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How to Use LinkedIn at Networking Events to Increase Sales

Today we’ll talk about LinkedIn, and how almost any business can use LinkedIn to increase their sales and not tick people off in the process.

LinkedIn and Facebook are the two big ones that we use. LinkedIn is required in most businesses, particularly in North America. I didn’t start using LinkedIn ’til only about five or six years ago. At first I was like, “What the heck is LinkedIn? How’s that going to help me? Isn’t that just really for putting your resume up online and people follow what you do?” That was the question I had. So, I started looking into LinkedIn and developing a LinkedIn profile.

How Important Is Social Credibility in Business?

I realized how important it was to add credibility to who you are in business. I’ve seen a lot of good profiles and bad profiles (profiles with pictures of their dog instead of their actual picture, pictures that were cropped out from a group photo, pictures that are out of focus or have a really bad background, pictures that are not professional-looking, etc.).

LinkedIn is not Facebook. It’s not for posting what you had for breakfast or for dinner. If I’m going to be looking for people I want to do business with, I’m not going to Facebook, first; I’m going to LinkedIn.

Collect Data at a Networking Event in 3 Simple Steps

There’s a neat little system you could do at a live networking event using LinkedIn to capture the whole room’s data. Here’s how it works:

1. Download the LinkedIn app.

One of the things I learned by me starting just from scratch over the past five or six years is there’s a way that you could get everybody in LinkedIn if they have the app. It’s really important that you download the LinkedIn app to your phone.

2. Be in control of the room. Find an opportunity to ‘control’ the room and get a chance to get the microphone to tell everybody to open up LinkedIn. At the very bottom of the LinkedIn app there are five icons. The first one looks like a little house. The second one is two people sitting side-by-side (that’s the one that you want to click). When you click that button, most of you in your LinkedIn app will have a little blue circle appear on your bottom right corner of your screen.

3. Find other users in the room.

That little blue circle has a picture of a person with a plus button. Clicking that little blue button opens up three menu items on your phone. The very first one says, ‘find nearby’—that’s exactly what it’s going to do. Turn it on, and now everybody that is in the room that is on this page in LinkedIn will appear so that you can connect and talk with them right there in the app.

They need to make sure they’re doing it on the app, they’ve enabled Bluetooth, and they need to enable their location services—couple of things they have to do, but LinkedIn will let them do that right off the bat and you can use this to connect with an entire room in seconds. It’s really interesting because it works off of a Bluetooth mesh, so it’s not even a matter of it only meets people as far away as your phone’s Bluetooth circumference. It actually goes to the farthest guys in the room’s phone. We’ve been at events where we actually picked up on someone that was at a train station a good mile from where we were. So, it’s really, really fantastic technology, but it only works if you’re ‘in control’ of the room.

Things to Keep In Mind

1. Ask for permission

My recommendation is, if you’re going to try to do this tip during your 30-second or your one-minute personal introduction in a room, make sure you have the organizer or the main speaker’s permission, because if you go fire up something like this and the speaker wanted to keep the data only for him, you could really, really frustrate someone and probably not be welcomed back to their events again. So, make sure you get permission.

If you’re worried about ‘giving away your data,’ it’s actually the opposite. What we found is everywhere we’ve done this, the tone of the event changes to, “Wow, this is one of the best events I’ve been to. I got some really, really helpful tips that I can take away and use in my business.” We talked about it at a big event, but it also works if you’re just sitting around a boardroom with a bunch of people and you all want to connect real quick. It’s extremely fast compared to any other way of connecting with people.

2. Make People Want to Connect with You

We have some networking events that we go to every week. When I stand up to do my forty seconds, they know what I’m going to do. They’ve already got their phones out, they’re already on LinkedIn, they’re all ready to go and get in the room because they know the power of being able to connect. You become the ‘hero’ that everybody connects to with, and you know that the speaker is going to forgive the fact that you take one minute and forty seconds instead of your allotted forty seconds because it does take a little time to get everybody to turn it on and get interacting with you.

You need to be animated when introducing this cool tip. Stand up and get everybody to hold up their hand. When I do it I tell everybody, “How would you like to connect with everyone in the room, raise your hand. Hold your phone up. I want you to use your phones right now. Get your phone in your hand. Everybody, put LinkedIn on your phone. Open your LinkedIn app. Raise your hand when you’ve got LinkedIn on your phones.” Make it interactive. Step by step, tell them exactly how to do it to get in there and then connect.

Now, if you’re not going to send somebody a message, don’t do it. Just connecting with somebody doesn’t do you any good. At least reach out and say, “Hey, what did you think at the event tonight?” Do something, say something, and make that connection. This helps you remember where you met them. So, for instance, if you copy and paste it to everyone you’re connected with and you get good engagement right away, you’ll be able to see where you met them when you open them up in the future.

Why Small Businesses Should Use LinkedIn

So how can a business owner actually start increasing his sales from the comfort of his bathrobe, over the morning coffee with a LinkedIn system that allows people to literally sharp-shoot the best people as far as their ideal client, tracking, how much work’s involved, and what the flow of the messages are? You create the engagement instead of just being another person that sends you the 9-page introduction the minute you connect to them.

What many smaller businesses don’t have is a big budget. Same with small businesses, say, a restaurant that’s not busy for three hours in a day, or someone who owns a clothing store, or a hair salon. Here’s something you can do with a free LinkedIn account. You don’t even need premium or Navigator. You do it with free and you could target demographics.

The great thing about LinkedIn is you can go and you can only search, say, for CEOs in Vancouver, you can search for anybody that has a certain thing in their description somewhere in their profile, like a title or a job description, skills—any of these things can all be searched for in LinkedIn.

Let’s say you’re a travel business—cruises and all. You could search for certain areas and search for certain likes and skills. You could search for people that are in the right demographic area like people that are most likely traveling. A teacher maybe? They get their summers off and they’ve got the holiday time. They probably save up for a vacation. Maybe that’s your perfect kind of client.

Be sure to put some thought into this step, because if you target the wrong people it’s not going to work. So, you do need to think outside the box a little bit in trying to define what demographic of people through what LinkedIn allows you to select (and it shows you all the things you can select from) would lead you to your people. So, it’s a really important part of your system that doesn’t even really get written down other than ‘go look for the kind of people you’re looking for.’ Defining that and figuring out how to search for them is half the battle.

Once you’ve done that, my system is simple. You’re going to reach out to and attempt to connect with 10 people a day. Consistency is key, and you do it the first thing in the morning. First thing with your morning coffee or your morning breakfast, have your computer out, your LinkedIn out, and attempt to connect with ten people in your demographic.

We have this availability in Small Business Dream, enabling users to track it all in the software, but you can do it manually with a spreadsheet. There’s lots of ways to do it. We just happen to have a tool that makes it really efficient. In other words, we’re giving you a great system but we just think it’s better if you use our tool.

The 10-a-day Rule — and Why It’s So Effective

I’ve used the system for years, taught the system to people in different businesses to be able to use it effectively, and what I found is that most people don’t have a lot of time. So, if I can show you how to use it in just 10 minutes a day to connect with 10 new people every day and then do the follow-up, they’ll give that a shot. I could find 10 minutes in the morning before I head off to work. You do need to find the time to follow up as well, so this will take up to an hour a day, throughout the day, but at 10 a day you can handle this follow up.

You’re going to get some follow ups and some questions back. If you do 50, you’re going to get a lot more questions back, but then you’re going to have even more follow-ups. Next thing you know, you’re into eight hours every third Friday just because that’s how things start to fall. So, spreading it out will keep it much more consistent, easier to maintain and easier to keep up to date with.

Ten is a magic number. That means you would attempt to connect with every day, 300 people every month (that means you’re working weekends, or, just do twice as much on Friday). Out of the 300 people, only about 25% are going to accept your connection, and out of those 75 people that accept your connection, only about 25% of them are actually going to engage with you. So, only about 15 or 20 people will actually turn into a conversation. And out of that, only 25 percent will turn into a possible conversation. So, four or five, and maybe only one will end up being the customer.

Create a Sales Funnel to Boost Online Engagement

Of course, you can increase your odds to a degree with things like a lead magnet where there’s a free giveaway (if it’s relevant to them), or a free call. A lot of it will depend on what tools you have in place to create the maximum amount of engagement. So, having a simple lead magnet funnel where you can collect their data outside of LinkedIn and with the right giveaway or giveaways, you might be able to increase that and create engagement a little bit more because you’re offering help. Don’t give them something they don’t need. Send them to a lead magnet funnel type scenario if what you had you knew could benefit them without a cost. So, it’s not a salesy thing; it’s a true benefit.

If you go to 88ur.com/craigbook, it will take you to a sales funnel that will allow you to put in your name, your email and click a button, and you’ll be able to download my book. You’ll be able to learn the whole system step by step on how to increase your sales quite rapidly again. If you have the time and you can do 20 a day and you’re ready for the ‘snowball effects,’ you can do it faster. If you have an employee who’s underutilized, it doesn’t have to be you.

Once you’ve actually written all of the follow ups, directions and the content that you want to use through your follow up, you literally assign this to a personal assistant. You can assign it to your daughter, to your son, to your friend’s daughter. It doesn’t have to be you until things get serious. When they get serious your assistant, or whoever is operating the controls for you, would then just reach out and say, “Hey, you need to intervene with this person because they’re ready to talk.” The great thing about my system is it’s not confined to LinkedIn.

I wrote specifically for LinkedIn, but you can do the exact same system in Facebook. It’s not as easy to target and find people in your demographic without ads on Facebook (Facebook really doesn’t want you reaching out and doing stuff). But with simple ad campaigns or reaching out to your friends, it could work. So, there’s definitely ways to be able to do that.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, at the end of the day, the way my LinkedIn system works is not to rely on LinkedIn. You need to pick up your phone and talk to people you need to as quickly as possible, making a real genuine engagement and have a conversation. You don’t want to talk for hours. Also, try to get out of LinkedIn because a lot of people don’t have notifications on in LinkedIn. Some only check it once every three or four days, so quickly in your process, you want to try to capture their contact details whether it be phone number, email, etc.

Another way to contact them outside of LinkedIn is by trying to build your list. Build your Linkedin list into your actual money-making list. It’s essentially your goal. Consistency is everything on LinkedIn. If you’re brand new, the magic number to get started to get to a number of connections is 500. You’ll see in your profile how many connections you have whether it’s under 500, and then it goes 500 plus. You could have a thousand. That way people will connect with you better, you’ll find your connection rate will increase the more connections you have.

Also, make sure that you send a custom message when you ask to connect with somebody. Don’t use any of the LinkedIn default stuff. That’s what the lazy people do and that’s why it doesn’t work. If you download a copy of my book, I show you some things that I use that are really popular, that work well, to be able to increase the engagement. If you can turn that out of the 300, increase it from 25% to just 35% accepting your friends in LinkedIn requests, to 50%, that would be great.

I now typically get around 75% of the people that I asked to engage and connect with me; they accept my connection. Why? Because I have over 6,000 connections on LinkedIn right now, and I’ve done that organically with people, not through any system, but it’s my own system—nothing automated, one person at a time, connecting with the right people to build my businesses.

If you’re interested in learning how to increase your sales quickly with LinkedIn, go to 88ur.com/craigbook. If you do decide you need software to help you do it more efficiently, Smallbizdream can help.

Creating an Email Strategy for Your Small Business

We’re all familiar with email marketing. It’s how we get our coupons, discounts, and newsletters from businesses all over the internet. Many of these emails are considered spam. So how do small companies without a big marketing budget do email marketing correctly to engage their audience and drive more people to their websites or into their stores?

We’ll answer the question with a proven strategy using sales and marketing automation. Here’s why you should consider creating an email strategy for your small business:

Half of the world’s population are email users. Estimates show around 3.8 billion email users by the end of 2018. Gmail users alone account for 1 billion email accounts, 75% of whom access them through their mobile devices. In fact, every mobile user has at least one email account for signing up on Google Play or accessing their social media account through Facebook Mobile or Twitter. One in two of your potential clients and customers are email users (give or take, depending on where you live), and by being able to connect with them, you could potentially increase your income by as much as 50%.

Stay on top of user engagement. Besides email, the internet has plenty of other platforms for connecting with other people around the world. But despite the popularity of social media, email still ranks as the best and the most preferred method of communication, particularly on anything business-related. One of the key advantages of having an email list is that, unlike Facebook or Twitter, you have more control over how your message is delivered to your target audience. You could spend hours creating great content for them, but it could quickly vanish from Facebook newsfeed or buried underneath by dozens of other posts within minutes.

Automate routine tasks more easily. Small business owners don’t have much time on their hands responding to every email. Fact is, they don’t have to. Some of the best sales and marketing automation have mailing lists, email templates, and auto-responders taking care of most of the work so they can focus more on things that matter. It might take some work initially getting more acquainted with the ins and outs and creating an email strategy. As you gain more experience, you’ll be spending less time with it, and begin to reap the benefits of using this sales and marketing feature for your small business.

Steps in Building your Email List Using Sales and Marketing Automation

Step 1:

Choose a sales and marketing automtion software with an auto-responder feature. If you’re just starting out with email marketing, you don’t need an expensive CRM like Salesforce, Hupspot, or NetSuite. There are plenty of options for business owners from email subscription service and lead-generation software. Small Business Dream offers service packages for small businesses who want to accelerate growth using this feature. Just remember to stay within the bounds on the proper use of this tool.

Step 2:

Set up an opt-in page or survey form. You can start with a very simple and straightforward landing page or survey form and add your bells and whistles as you get better. Small Business Dream can help you set up your first landing page and survey form. Share the link through your Facebook Page, WordPress, or your company website. Or you can have it the old way and add the contact yourself (be sure to get their email addresses). Another method is to put QR codes in conspicuous places to get your walk-in prospects and customers to your landing page or online survey. Offer freebies or discounts for taking the time.

Step 3:

Wait for confirmation from your subscribers. Double opt-ins is the preferred method of choice for email subscriptions because it accomplishes two things at once. First, it filters out low-quality leads, and second, it helps verify real users. This might seem tedious compared to single opt-ins, but you’ll have better chances of making more conversions over the long haul for getting high-quality leads. It consists of a few lines asking your recipients to confirm they’ve opted in to your mailing list by clicking a link, etc., hence a “double” opt-in.

Step 4:

Segment your prospects and customers. You may start with just a few categories at first. Later, you can add more details to your customer data to make it more granular. Small Business Dream allows you to segment your prospects and customers from your initial survey. For instance, you can include a list of brands, companies, or products on the survey form and Small Business Dream will categorize each contact based on which box your visitors have checked. The same applies for setting priority to every customer. You can update their category by giving out surveys periodically in order to stay relevant to them.

Step 5:

Create a simple email follow-up series. Take some time reading through the templates to see how each customer engagement progress seamlessly to the next, and so on. It usually takes some practice and experimenting to make sure it won’t sound robotic. As much as possible, we want to avoid the impression that they’re dealing with a robot secretary instead of a real person, by a adding a human touch to every conversation.

Conclusion

Having a mailing list for your small business is more of a necessity these days, now that our target audience is moving towards mobile. Take some time learning the ropes and start making your own email strategy.

Learn more on how you can successfully build your business through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

5 Reasons Why You Should Learn CRM Now

Running a successful business takes more than just hard work. A lot of times, it’s more about being smart, critical thinking, and minimizing work through sales and marketing automation and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Many small businesses are still missing out on this remarkable tool which would have saved them time and money, reduced stress, and helped grow their business like never before. However, it’s never too late learning about CRMs. We have a system that can help small business owners and salespersons become a CRM virtuoso with practice and a little bit of creativity.

Here are five reasons why you should learn CRM now.

Use Time More Productively

You’ve probably heard about the 80/20 rule with regard to time management and productivity. Put simply, 80 percent of outputs comes from 20 percent of our tasks, while the other 20 percent comes from 80 percent of tasks.

Small business owners often put too much time and energy on things which can easily be done through automation like customer acquisition, and maintaining customer loyalty. Time lost is money lost, so we want to focus more on strategy and developing skill sets such as dealing with prospects and customers – also known as ‘soft skills’ – and be able to automate most of our routine tasks.

Small Business Dream CRM works on the same principle by allowing the system to do most of the heavy lifting so that by the time it gets to you, all it takes is a simple follow-up call, email, or SMS. In other words, we’re working smarter, not harder. Additionally, Small Business Dream keeps your customers in the loop through automated email follow-up series, newsletters, and surveys.

Use Technology to Outpace the Competition

Technology has levelled the playing field for many of our small businesses. We’ve seen this many times with brick and mortar stores, local shops and restaurants growing massively through the internet and social media. It’s incredibly hard to compete with stores like Walmart, Amazon, McDonalds and General Electric, however when it comes to reaching your target audience, no matter if you’re big or small, we all have the same access.

Today, it only takes a simple tool like sales and marketing automation to do certain tasks which would otherwise be more involved and time-consuming. Small Business Dream CRM combines marketing automation with a simple, user-friendly interface to help business owners build their own templates, landing pages, sales funnel, and survey forms, and be able to promote their business on multiple channels, either directly from a sales funnel card (QR code or link to site) or through referral links, social media posts, updates, and invites – the possibilities are endless.

Create a Good Impression about Your Business

Customers will have an opinion about your business during the crucial 8 seconds on your website or landing page. They’d either stay on page to learn more about your business, or look somewhere else. Most of the hard work when trying to get more customers comes from designing landing pages which are both appealing and engaging.

CRMs make it surprisingly easy for businesses to create user experience with potential clients and customers. Small Business Dream integrates a lot of its site-building capabilities on the Sales Funnel Setup enabling business to create stunning websites, sales funnels, and landing pages. With practice you’ll be able to create professional-looking web pages to impress your target audience, but more importantly, convert more prospects into qualified leads and buying customers.

Save Money on Your Marketing Expenses

Automation took over a lot of our tasks such as sending emails, replying to certain requests, promotion, lead acquisition, and so on. It enables small businesses to cut back on marketing expenses while still gaining a competitive edge over the competition whether it’s real estate, insurance, event planners, restaurants, salons, dental practice – pretty much any kind of business.

Nowadays, you don’t have to hire additional personnel to do multiple tasks. You can build on your marketing strategy from time to time, spending just an hour or two on Small Business Dream. Customize your email autoresponder, tweak some settings, and perfect your Sales Funnel after doing all your tasks in the Action List.

Spend as much time as your schedule would allow. For those who need more time typing in customer information, Small Business Dream has a Card Scan function to take care of your data entry tasks, and done-for-you (DFY) website setup packages for busy business owners.

Have Full Control On How You Want to Interact with Customers.

Marketing automation works best with different approaches to customer acquisition such as permission marketing, personalized messages, and human interaction. We want to use both full-automation and semi-automation when dealing with potential clients and customers. Buying lists from data suppliers won’t cut it, and you could end up paying fines on the wrong use of marketing automation like sending unsolicited emails (CAN-SPAM Act of 2003).

Small Business Dream CRM gives business owners total control by combining different approaches on how they wish to interact with their leads and buying customers. Need more clients to fill up your Action List? Set up a Sales Funnel or landing page and have your visitors and walk-in customers optin to your email lists, Facebook, or Twitter follow up series. Use templates to quickly send personalized, semi-automated messages on the fly, or make the call as soon as they show up on your Call List.

Conclusion

Your ability to use CRM will make a big difference in getting more customers and increasing sales. With all the challenges faced by many small businesses and with competition on every turn, this could mean the difference between rapid growth and going out of business. You, too, can experience the power of CRM if you only take the time to put these words into action.

Take your business to the next level through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

It’s Tougher Than Ever To Advertise on Facebook. What Should Small Businesses Do?

Facebook offers more control to users on what they want to see on their newsfeed; it will start filtering out ads and content they’re not interested in. This came as a response to the growing concern with regard to social media’s role on our society’s well-being.

In this article, we’ll talk how putting more emphasis on community-building over competition for viewer’s attention on social media can benefit small businesses.

Why a Change in Focus is Vital for Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube have changed the way people interact with each other. They paved the way for communities of like-minded people to share life’s experiences and interests over the internet.

Since then, users have always thought of getting more people to like their posts, and it wasn’t long before sharing became attention-seeking. Internet marketers quickly saw its potential for marketing and spared no expense getting more ‘likes’ and comments to stay on top of everybody’s newsfeed.

Other businesses won’t just stand and watch while competitors get all the attention on social media. Facebook ads, page boosts and paid ‘likes’ soon became the norm in social media marketing, and staying on top became increasingly difficult (and expensive) as more and more people and companies fight for user attention.

Ads were just one of Facebook’s many problems. They also have to deal with fake news, scams, clickbaits, and viral posts which doesn’t serve its users. Changing Facebook’s algorithm gave users a much better experience. (Notice how your friends’ most recent posts always come first. Same goes for more informative posts; irrelevant posts are demoted or removed completely.)

Facebook is getting more serious about its purpose as a company. Mark Zuckerberg is a little concerned and vows on “protecting the community” which he believes is “more important than maximizing profits.”

Facebook’s Focus on the Community

Most of us can only look back when YouTube was totally ad-free before Google bought it for 1.65 billion USD in November 2006. It soon turned into a money-making social media platform with ads taking the likeness of TV commercials but with some degree of user interaction. Remember how quickly you skipped the ad as soon as it starts, or piqued when forced to watch all 20 seconds of it?

Facebook went down the same path when it started Facebook Ads, paid likes, and page boosting. However, after dragging users into countless hours of endless scrolling and passive consumption, they’ve decided to redeem themselves by giving more attention on things that matter most – meaningful social interaction.

This might cost Facebook a lot of money, considering most of their income comes from advertising. To get around this, Facebook might give users the ability to choose ad-free subscriptions on a monthly basis for a fee which is approximately the price per user paid for by advertisers on Facebook. Another option is to provide premium accounts the ability to fine-tune their viewing experience and exceed certain limitations not accessible in free accounts.

From the standpoint of a social media marketer who rely on Facebook ads for traffic and customer acquisition, this can be somewhat unappealing, since most of their high-end clients and potential customers who can afford ad-free subscriptions would be out of reach by then, and they would have to settle with what’s left of Facebook’s free user base.

Having an ad-free, community-centered Facebook for users is much more complicated than we think. Facebook’s intention to take away distractions from the user experience is a noble one, although much of it remains to be seen. As with any kind of business, it has to somehow generate income in order to survive, i.e. by giving “free access” to services, paid for by advertising.

What This Means for Small Businesses

One of the biggest advantages of small businesses over large companies is the community that was built around it. Creating and maintaining customer relationships is much easier on a tightly-knit group of customers than having to deal with a very broad audience. Instead of social media being used as the battleground for people’s attention, it will become a truly engaging, interactive space where real businesses and customers with common interests can share their ideas.

Paid advertising will always have its place in the marketing mix, but social media is not really about throwing your ad into a prospect’s face. Be genuine with your customers, speak to them on a personal level and they will refer you to their friends. That’s the power of Facebook, not trying to outspend the competition.

Big businesses who rely heavily on advertising might have to take their outbound marketing strategies elsewhere. And what better place to advertise than Google? This way, we won’t have to worry going against these giants on an ad-free social media. We can devote more of our time and resources building a community of customers and growing our businesses through customer referrals, word of mouth, and other networking strategies.

Having your own site where you can take your customers for a brief tour of your goods and services is the next big step after you’ve accumulated enough audience from social media. This is where your business starts experiencing exponential growth through organic searches and visits driving more traffic to your site.

As a small business, we need to start somewhere, and social media could be one of those places where we can grow our audience. Creating and maintaining customer relationships has always been the key.

Take your business to the next level through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

Improving Customer Acquisition with CRM

The biggest challenge facing small businesses is how they can get more customers and maximize their return on investments.

Fortunately, we can easily find ways to improve customer acquisition without having to spend a lot of money on traditional outbound marketing strategies. It only takes a little bit of creativity and trying out new ideas.

There are two main ways – offline and online. We will talk about both ways here.

Promote Your Business Offline

Everybody is online so why not try the personal touch. A lot of customers still like and require the personal touch.

Some offline customer engagements are as effective as a marketing strategy today as it was 100 years ago when the majority of businesses didn’t have a website. These include:

going to networking events
taking your business outdoors
sponsorship & giveaways

Meeting up with people in a friendly, non-selling environment like networking events increases your exposure without spending too much on paid ads. However, to be successful, you have to present your business in light of the customer’s needs, pain points and how your products and services can provide a solution to these problems.

The idea is to go and help people, and to show how your company can create value for them. It may not always lead to an immediate sale, but it can help grow your network and develop good relationships with potential buyers and customers.

Whenever possible, bring along something that reminds them about your business. It could be your business card, key holder, bunker ring, or any small gizmos you can carry along. I always carry bunker rings with me to networking events. Why? Because my potential customers will stick my bunker rings on their phones and every time they glance at their device, it will remind them of me.

Another way to help you with customer acquisition is to take your business outdoors by having your own space during special occasions or community events where people can find your company, products, or services. Talk with the organizers and make some arrangements to have your own booth set up.

Event organizers might also look for sponsors to reduce the overall cost of running the event. You can take this opportunity to have your company name or logo displayed in conspicuous areas for a few hundred dollars’ worth of donation.

Once you have talked to them and exchanged business cards, then it’s a good idea to put them into an online follow-up series so they don’t forget about you.

If you want them to get to your sales funnel, you can use Small Business Dream’s Customer Acquisition tools and have your landing page address or QR code printed on your Sales Funnel Card.

Most importantly, always make an effort to follow up with them as soon as you can.

Take Your Business Online

Promoting your business online is a sure way to improve customer acquisition using cost-effective marketing tools over the Internet. However, it’s tough to get noticed. Some of the best ways to increase customer awareness about your business include having a blog or website, a social media account, and a sales funnel.

Your blog or website can serve many uses for your business. It helps educate people about the benefits of using your product or service, provide useful information about the subject they’re looking on, and can be used for earning residual income through affiliate links, Google AdSense, etc. But most importantly, it helps maintain people’s interest and lead them closer to your goal – to get more customers.

Social media can also be used in customer acquisition, but because marketers have been using social media the wrong way, business owners have started to lose interest in it. They don’t have a system to follow up with fans and followers in a realistic way. Most of them aren’t even real, so business owners end up using auto-responders (‘robot secretaries’) the whole time. Most businesses don’t think strategically when it comes to social media but use a shotgun blast approach, hoping to catch somebody or something.

Small Business Dream is an inexpensive tool that helps business owners manage their social media contacts more efficiently with their Social Connect, and the Social Series in the Action List. Social Connect gives them the option to curate and import fans and followers to their contact list.

Since we don’t want our customer database to be stuffed with unwanted (fake, pseudonymous, or artificial) contacts, we need to screen them out of the social contact list, and leave the ones who show genuine interest to learn more about the company. This would allow sales people to work on the Action List’s Social Series more efficiently and get real results from using social media to get more customers online.

Sales funnel is a very useful tool in customer acquisition when used with offline and other online methods. With Small Business Dream, business owners can easily create their own sales funnel like a pro without having to learn HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, and use the link for their Social Series and opt-in subscriptions online. They can also use the link offline through Sales Funnel Cards, tent cards, signboards, or directly through an iPad or tablet set up to the sales funnel in-store.

Build a Customer Base to Promote Your Business

Your first customers constitute the core of your business from which you can grow more customers. Coming up with a loyalty program, customer specials, customer referrals, offering discounts, and commissions, can help accelerate your business.

Although it might cost you a little bit of profit, you’ll have greater gains in the long run as your business gains momentum. Looking at it from an angle, think of it as being a part of your marketing expenses. But instead of them going to paid advertisements, they go directly to your customers who will benefit from them. The result is a happy customer base who will talk about their experience with your company to other people, and your business becoming an instant success.

Take your business to the next level through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.