One Sherpa

I have personally found this quite a difficult question to answer because for so long we have relied on advertising to achieve our reach to prospective customers.

We relied on other people such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television to reach people with our marketing messages and to bring in leads.

However, now that people are responding more to what their friends think than responding to advertising, we are all having to become a mini media company with our own targeted list of prospects that we are communicating with.

So how big should my list be if I’m to achieve a steady list of inquiry coming into my business?

I know of two businesses where the customer list is approximately 200 and the list of prospects is approximately 30,000 but both of these businesses market to very large corporate customers.

I also know of another business where the customer list is approximately 25,000 and the overall list is approximately 100,000.

What I’m picking is that as a small business owner you are somewhere in between these two examples.

So what’s a good ‘rule of thumb’ to get started at?

In our own business we’re looking to achieve a list of prospects that is 10 times the size of our customer list and the reason for this is that we’re looking for substantial growth.

Many small business owners do not even keep or manage their list of customer prospects effectively and therefore have no idea what the size of it is.

Can I suggest you find your list and get it organized today.

What is your experience on building a list?

Is it very different to the three examples I’ve given in this post?

Have you noticed that people are demanding more and more for free in the market today?

Think back a few years and what you used to get for free was advertising. I’m not talking about the advertiser but the consumer. The only free thing that you received was an advertisement asking you to buy something. So what’s happened?

With the rise and rise of the internet, consumers are demanding more and more for free. But in order to capture the potential customer’s attention there needs to be a higher and higher value of free.

There seems to me to be four different levels of free that you can use in your business to gain and retain potential customer’s attention

1. GIVE SOMETHING TO READ: The earliest version of this is a newsletter and we can all remember the early websites where you left your name and email to get the monthly newsletter. Now many people opt out of newsletters because it’s something they don’t read and therefore is of little value to them. A more valuable free is an e-book where you get something quite lengthy and potentially more valuable but many people simply do not read today because they’re used to being entertained and have moved to listening or watching as their primary means of taking in information.
    
2. GIVE SOMETHING TO SEE: Videos or voice over presentations are now easy to make and can bring far more value than static words on a page. Visual stimulation often brings more value and you can identify more strongly with the message being given. It also lets you see more of what’s on offer.
    
3. GIVE SOMETHING TO LISTEN TO: Podcasts have become a very popular way of receiving information because you can take information in while doing other things (like your daily exercise) Time is such a premium for people that it is fast becoming of more value than money. So bringing something which has a flexible time element to it will have a higher value than something which requires a set time like a free webinar.
    
4. GIVE SOMETHING TO DO: Free online tools and calculators have a high value because consumers can actually interact and get specific variable results from which they can make decisions. This has a high value for the consumer but also a high value for the provider because the two way feed back can be used as a form of qualification on both sides of the fence and save time in the selling process.

What ever you decided to provide as free in your business, make sure it is valuable to your potential customers because if it is not, they will simply ignore you.

Please let me know of your success stories regarding free in your business.