It would be interesting to draw together data recording the likely percentage strike rate from online marketing techniques – email campaigns for example – as compared with good old fashioned face-to-face sales appointments?
Has email marketing had its day? Do we react differently now to the countless numbers of requests that drop into our inbox: buy this, buy that?
Consumer preferences change over time so the likelihood is that at some point in time our email lists will lose addresses as consumers exercise their rights to unsubscribe. Email marketing is cheap and there are numerous ways that you can automate the process of contacting prospects, but does the process of littering inboxes really convert into sales?
For those of us who are comfortable with the way they look in front of a camera there is the possibility of winning a Skype-type sales call across the internet. Again, this is cheap to set up and if you have your presentation carefully thought through this should provide you with a realistic opportunity to close a sale.
Or you could employ the real world face-to-face meeting, see the whites of your customers eyes. This probably offers your best chance to convert prospects into customers, but at a much higher cost: you will physically have to relocate.
There are other variants. Perhaps we could engage our web-technicians to create sales videos, entertaining bytes of visual copy, maybe with a dash of humour that you could send to your prospect? If the cost of acquisition numbers worked, these videos could be personalised for the particular prospect.
Our need to keep finding new business, the life blood of our business planning, will require us to keep innovating; find new ways to communicate what we do, distinguish this from our competitors and create new ways to engage our prospects.
Maybe as a group we should pool ideas? What are your thoughts?
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