CRM Marketing Series: Part 2 | Relationship Building

In our recent article, To CRM or Not to CRM? Why Market to Current Customers? we challenged you to look at your business and evaluate how your company approaches relationship building and how well your employees build those relationships. We wanted to follow with more tips to make your CRM&M work for you!

Tip #1: Our favorite reminder—avoid the hard sell! If you communication is always about your business and products, people will tune out.

Tip #2: Let your personality shine through. Read the full article…

Email Still Outpaces Online Networking

Internet users spend about 4.6 hours a week on social networking, a survey from global market research firm TNS reports, but e-mail is what they use the Internet for most often. The survey found that users spend about 72 percent of their time every week reading and sending e-mails, which accounts for about 4.4 hours of activity.

Checking their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and related activities takes up about 46 percent of their weekly time. Almost 75 percent say they check their e-mail every day, but fewer than half visit their social networking sites as frequently.

Given these statistics, it makes sense for you to have email as a component of your marketing plan. This may consist of monthly newsletters, coupons, invitations to special events or for free whitepapers or books. If you are not doing email now and need some help, give us a call at (919) 850-0605 or send an email: jfrazer@theexpertspeakers.com.

Buzzworthy Lawyers

Buzzwords become buzzwords because they strike a cord. While they’re hot, phrases like “win-win,” “think outside the box,” “convenient location,” “free consultation,” all make the advertiser appear to be on the “cutting edge.” But what happens when you are using a buzzword past the expiration date?

You lose clout and become part of the incessant background noise and not the hype buzz you’d wanted. Attorneys, for example, are egregious over users of the phrase “free consultation.” It is hard to think about other ways to impart this benefit—especially if you are using pay-per-click or other advertising with limited space, but when you do find other ways to invite people “to learn more about their rights for free” results will increase.

Your advertising is supposed to make you stand apart and tell the story of why you are different. It should not make you blend into the crowd because you are mimicking other competitors. Attorneys are very good at looking within their own industry and following the lead of the big dogs-the problem is it creates an environment of sameness, almost inbred advertising.

If you are going to use a buzzworthy term, be the first to do it so you set the standard. Look to other industries for a fresh approach. Better yet, stop writing “ad copy.” Really analyze who you are and what you do best. Make sure it matches the reality of what your clients like about you, then find a way to include words that your clients use and understand. And make sure you monitor your ads to avoid “ad fatigue”—change them based on what you learn works best through your testing. Online ads need more updates, but television ads can and should run for a longer time frame.

We all want to be different, but actually having the guts to do it is another thing. Are you up for being truly buzzworthy by creating your own path?

Buzzworthy?

Buzzwords become buzzwords because they strike a cord. While they’re hot, phrases like “win-win,” “think outside the box,” “convenient location,” “free consultation,” all make the user appear to be on the “cutting edge.” But what happens when you are using a buzzword past the expiration date?

You lose clout and become part of the incessant background noise and not the hype buzz you’d wanted. Attorneys are the most egregious over users of “free consultation.” It is hard to get them to think about other ways to say this phrase, but when you do find other ways to invite people to learn more about their rights for free results increase.