Creating a Referral System

Posted on August 24, 2010 by admin

Guerrilla Marketing is a fantastic book, especially when geared toward the financial services industry.  So, here’s another article I’d like to pass on to you -

Creating A Referral System – From Guerrilla Marketing

Question, have you ever received a new piece of business and thought afterward, oops I forgot to thank the person who referred these people to me?

The goal is to get the communication flowing between yourself, your new client and the referrer. Once they sign on as a client, I would ask if they can call the referrer to thank them for introducing myself to them. Then I would send a thank you card or letter and gift.

If this is a first time referral from somebody, you should make it so that it appears as if this is the biggest thing they have ever done for you. Then a phone call after they would have received the gift to touch base with them and than them again for the referral. At that time you may ask if there may be anyone else if you are comfortable asking. The referrer received two phone calls and a gift, just for referring one person.

One idea is to send a lunch gift certificate, and possibly the referrer may take your new client and the person who was referred to lunch. A second idea is to thank them both, your new client and the referrer, take both of them out for lunch.

It’s important that both people understand the system of appreciation for referrals, and that you appreciate these referral. I always tell my sister who is an actress. ‘Its not what they say about you that’s important, it’s important that they’re talking about you.’

Grant’s Tip: The follow up system or process is the key. If I send you a referral, make sure that for the first referral a gift is sent. You don’t have to send a gift every time, however the first one should receive a thank you note and gift. The follow up to the referrer letting them know if the people the referred became a client or not is also very important. If I sent you three referrals and none of them became clients, then I would start to wonder why. But if you called me back and explained that these three people are in the process of becoming clients, then I would feel more comfortable. Feedback and tracking is key to all referrals.

I use a referral worksheet in several ways. First, to record the referral and the referrer, and the type of referral. Second, to make sure that the referrer was send a thank you card and or gift. Third, to track in a calendar year where and type of business was generated.

I can go back each year and look at the referral sheets to see how many referrals and the type and from whom I am generating from. For example, I may be receiving a lot from accountants, but not lawyers for example, and I may want to pay more attention to the lawyers.

If your receive several referrals from one individual or source, such as an accountant, then track the referrals received as well as the referrals sent on the referral worksheet. It is also very important to receive feedback from the person you sent the referral to, to make sure you are helping reach your clients goals in a satisfactory way with referral sources.

On the form you would keep track of this, and periodically check back if you have not heard what happened with your referral. With referrals, If you give them, then you get them. Make it a goal in your client review planning and interviews to try to generate at least one referral. Imagine if you sent out 200 referrals this year. Do you think you might get a few back in return?

Copyright 2003 By: Jay Conrad Levinson and Grant W. Hicks, C.I.M.,FCSI – Co-author of “Guerrilla Marketing For Financial Advisors “, Trafford Publishing 2003. 

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Local Time – Discover the benefits of local online advertising.

Posted on August 17, 2010 by admin

By Amanda C. Kooser – click here to view on www.entrepreneur.com

Customers are increasingly looking online for local businesses. Online advertising that targets local markets is a growing area on the internet, and the big search engines are working to refine their offerings. Yahoo! Local has made a move by introducing Featured Listings. It’s a straightforward, subscription-based, self-serve model that offers a tier of flat-rate monthly fees for advertising.

The cost starts at $25 per month and includes guaranteed premium placement in Yahoo! Local, detailed reports of your listing’s performance, and a customizable listing and business details page. Rates can vary with business location and category–high-population areas like New York City and high-demand business categories like florists command rates of up to $300 per month. Featured Listings does offer a simple way for businesses to test out the local online advertising market and find out firsthand if the returns justify the investment.

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The Secret to Successful Advertising (there is no secret)…

Posted on August 13, 2010 by admin

Everyone wants a never-before heard secret about getting advertising to work.  Unfortunately, there is no secret… In the interest of making vTALK even remotely interesting I consistently peruse the internet to try to find special tidbits of information that help bring businesses advertising success – but to no avail.

Let me tell you 3 things about how to get advertising to work:

1) You actually have to DO it.  Anything even remotely inconsistent is relatively pointless.  A social media campaign without proper maintenance and management is useless and a bill board campaign on 2 billboards in a large city for only 3 months usually has a very low ROI.

2) You need to spend either time, money or both, on your advertising campaign.  Business owners often forget that marketing and advertising is a function of business – it’s not an option anymore.  I suggest beginning to think of advertising being as important as your product or service itself.

3) Advertising efforts need to be managed and tracked.  Google Analytics is free and available to anyone with a website – how well is your website performing?  Do you even know?  How well did that extraordinarily expensive direct mailing do?  Was it effective?  How much money did you earn?  Did you make your money back?  And how about that social media campaign – does it cost you more in time a than it actually brings through the door?

These are all question you must be able to answer! Otherwise you won’t know where to make alterations and modifications to your advertising strategy to find what works.

- Catherine Savello | Creative Director

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Financial Advisor Marketing – From Guerrilla Marketing

Posted on August 10, 2010 by admin

Be a resource to your clients by focusing on their lives as well as their finances.

When I first heard of financial planners becoming more holistic in their approach, it sounded kind of strange. After all we are here to help people financially, not become life coaches. But when you look at different ways to take a holistic approach several ideas come to mind. One idea came from Barry Lavalley of Lavalley Communications in British Columbia.

His concepts are the next wave for financial advisors to embrace. Life planning is the process of helping people focus on their true values and motivations of their lives. It is in using these values, motivations, goals and objectives to guide the planning process.

It is providing a framework for making choices and decisions in life that have financial consequences or implications, according to Steven Shagrin, Past president, international Society for Retirement and Life Planning.

To discuss this concept in one chapter is impossible. However here are a some ideas to get you thinking about becoming more holistic in your approach.

Build your own yellow pages:

  1. Develop a list of potential contacts in other areas of peoples lives.
  2. Use the list to create a referral directory of services for your clients.
  3. Circulate the list with permission to your clients once per year
  4. Eventually you will see the list expand because of your conscious effort to create your own yellow pages for clients- you will find that once people find out about the list that they are not on, they will want to get on the list.

Build your own holistic planning questions

Start recording information about clients lives and goals. This can include spiritual, physical, social, recreational, family, education or other pursuits in life. Use this information along with your yellow pages to help people in other areas of their lives.

For example, lets say you had a client who wished someday that they went on a cruise. You define their finances as how much they may plan to put aside on the cruise. Then ask them if they have a ravel agent. You can then arrange a meeting with a travel agent you recommend to plan out cruise destinations and book the trip.

The client takes a wonderful cruise holiday and returns thanking you for making things happen in their life. You get the satisfaction knowing that you were the catalyst in that persons lives and helping achieve more than just asset allocation.

Grant’s Tip: Have you ever been asked by a client ‘ Who is a good doctor, dentist, mechanic, travel agent ?’ If your clients come to you for recommendations, can you imagine the referral possibilities you are creating. Imagine your auto dealer sending you someone who just received a large windfall and bough a new car and recommended the person to talk to you about their windfall.

Can you imagine sending a retiree to a personal trainer and that person telling their friends about their financial advisor who helped them find a personal trainer. Will their friends not ask who their financial advisor is? The possibilities are endless when you start to take a holistic approach to your business.

The new roles for financial advisors can take on new meaning for all of your marketing. Your newsletters can focus on holistic issues such as health or recreation. Your seminars and workshops are on non financial topics. You get more involved in the clients life and their family. Estate planning takes on a whole new meaning. You help your clients attitude towards money and investing by focusing on the benefits, not the results. Your brochures and communications material take on a life of their own and redefine your role as an advisor. Your satisfaction goes up along with your client as you see the benefits through your positive client feedback. Instead of phone calls asking you for a market commentary, your client wants the name of a good general contractor to build an addition on their home.

A second way to becoming a life planner is to hire your own success coach. The growth of coaching is huge in North America, and for professionals what a better way to take a holistic coach is to hire a coach or take a coaching program or certification.

All top actresses and actors, athletes and top business people have coaches. Consider hiring a coach to help you in certain areas of your business such as marketing, business planning or overall success coaching.

Financial advisors who want the fast track often overlook the value of feedback. It’s like Steven Covey says’ The law of the harvest, you must plant in the spring and harvest in the fall.’ Many top advisors find themselves burning out amid all of their success. It is natural to want more and more success, but at what price. A coach can help you manage your growth while maintaining the lifestyle that you work so hard to enjoy.

Copyright 2003 By: Jay Conrad Levinson and Grant W. Hicks, C.I.M.,FCSI – Co-author of “Guerrilla Marketing For Financial Advisors “, Trafford Publishing 2003.

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What I’ve learned about advertising over the past 2 years

Posted on August 9, 2010 by admin

I’ve been in advertising for the past 2 years here in Las Vegas.  We’ve handled the design and structure of client’s website to better assist with SEO, we’ve built their marketing collateral (brochures, business cards, stationery), put together their newspaper advertisements and written several storyboards for video commercials (whether posted on the internet or elsewhere).  However, probably the biggest thing I’ve learned about successful advertising is consistency.

Though this may be like a “No Kidding, Sherlock” comment, one might be surprised as to how many business owners have no idea that a single flyer distribution campaign will not send sales shooting through the roof.  However, 7 similar campaigns offering different promotional aspects, or plugging different products may start pulling sales slightly upward.

Have you ever heard of the “Rule of 7?” This rule is a marketing concept that means a company must connect with a client at least 7 different times before the prospect even begins to recognize your company name and/or your logo.  Yes, seven times.

I never consult clients in a single push campaign because they never see a return on their investment for their advertising efforts.  However, if you are running a small television commercial, sponsoring traffic reports on the local news or radio stations and paying for pay-per-click campaigns on Google or your favorite social media network (like Facebook), then yes, someone is much more likely to remember who you are and what you do (if you effectively convey your message).

The effectiveness of an advertising campaign, specifically on a local level, relies heavily upon the law of consistency.  KEEP THINGS GOING!  People tend to refer to this approach as “Drip Marketing” – but whatever you call it, it’s just a matter of staying in front of prospects.

These concepts are applicable all across the board, from industry to industry.  Physicians and Dentists are advised to remind clients for appointments (ask patients to opt in for text message reminders), Financial Advisers are advised to utilize email newsletter marketing (E-Relationships, Benchmark Email, Emerald etc.), real estate agents are encouraged to work the referral system from current contacts and networking events.  Home maintenance industries (lawn care, pest control, roofers, painters, cleaning services) are of course advised to continue to reach out to existing clients and promote customer loyalty benefits and new packages for services.

Every industry is different, every business is even more different and each business owner has their own needs and ideas of what will make their business better.  If the business does not currently have their own marketing/advertising department we always recommend outsourcing the work.  Marketing is a function of business, it is essential to success and is better left up to the specialists who know whom to contact, where to distribute the message and the time frame/consistency in which it should be done.

Catherine Savello | Creative Director

Verge Marketing Group

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Internet Marketing for Local Small Businesses

Posted on July 29, 2010 by admin

By David Frey – Please visit his site: http://www.marketingbestpractices.com

Not long ago I was speaking to a C.P.A. friend of mine who had invested a significant amount of his marketing budget to build an online presence. He spent a lot of time carefully designing the site and providing information and graphics to bring it alive.

Once the site was completed and the switch was turned on there was a sense of pride and accomplishment with high hopes that the website would provide a marketing spark that would help to increase his client base.

After several months, with next to no traffic, my C.P.A. friend confided that he regretted investing so much money in something that brought so little value. After all, he mentioned, it’s not like he was selling his services to clients outside his local town.

After consulting with him I offered several strategies that he could use to increase the amount of local, hometown visitors to his website. If you are a small offline business you may find several of these innovative strategies useful to your local Internet marketing efforts.

Strategy #1 – Free Vacation Drawing

Set up joint ventures with local businesses to give away a ticket for a free two-night, three-day vacation drawing to their customers as a way of saying thank you for doing business with them. You provide the free vacation drawing tickets and they give them to their customers.

The ticket, which has a special code on it, instructs the customer to go to your website and enter in the special code to sign up for the drawing. The free vacation certificates cost $10 (admin fee) and you can get as many as you want from MyFreeTravel.com.

Lest you think these mini-vacations are a scam, I have used them myself and had a great time. Many (very nice) hotels would rather have a free occupant than no occupant because it introduces the visitor to their hotel. So they give away free mini-stays.

A similar technique was used just recently between Microsoft (to introduce the X-Box) and Taco Bell (to introduce their quesadilla), which netted hundreds of thousands of unique visitors to the X-Box website. Taco Bell gave a ticket with a code on it to everyone who purchased a quesadilla. The ticket holder then took the ticket home, went to the X-Box site and signed up for a free X-Box giveaway.

When you announce the winners (which cost you $10 a winner) they will be required to come to your office to pick up the certificate. So not only did you drive them to your website but you got a face-to-face visit with them and a little goodwill.

Strategy #2 – Business Card Drawing

Ask local businesses such as restaurants and dry cleaners to sponsor a monthly business card drawing giveaway with you in exchange for an electronic list of their customers.

The restaurant, for example, would have a small bowl or box for business people to submit their business cards for the free giveaway. You commit to paying for the two free lunches and to converting the business cards into an electronic customer list for the restaurant. The restaurant commits to sponsoring the business card drop boxes and to an endorsed monthly emailing to their customers plugging your business.

Once you have the endorsed mailing you can continue to email market (or send an informative ezine) to those people again and again with the email addresses from the business cards.

Strategy #3 – Create a Local High School Sports Website

If your small town is anything like my small town, people are high school sports crazy. Unfortunately, there isn’t one central location where you can access local sports scores and highlights.

Offer to pay the development and maintenance cost for a local high school sports website which can be maintained by a joint high school web team using volunteer high school students. You can call it “YourTownHighSchoolSports.com.”

Of course you will have banners and links leading to your site because you are the sponsor.

I’ll bet other local businesses would be willing to help sponsor the site in exchange for a little traffic to their website as well. Not only do you get local website traffic, you’ll receive a lot of valuable goodwill as well.

Strategy #4 – Referral Email Marketing

Start collecting the email addresses of all your current customers. One way to do this is by setting aside a day or two, which is solely dedicated to calling customers and offering to send them a coupon via email in exchange for their email address.

A second way to collect your customer’s email addresses is to send out a physical newsletter and extend a great offer to everyone who sends you an email within the next 48 hours.

Put a viral marketing spin on this strategy by emailing your customers an offer for a free gift if they forward your email offer to three local friends using a tell-a-friend or refer-it script.

Strategy #5 – Flyer Marketing

Contact the local Boy Scouts and offer to sponsor a fundraiser activity by attaching door hangers on homes in the local area. The flyer will offer a $10 mini-vacation (same as in Strategy #1) to those who go to your website and enter in a special code that was given to them on the flier.

Again, with this strategy you would simply send them to myfreetravel.com to pick up their $10 mini-vacation certificate after entering in their special code on your website. Make sure you create a customized landing page with an offer on it for your free vacation visitors.

Strategy #6 – The Voting Page

Watch your local newspaper very closely for controversial topics. Once a super-controversial topic hits, develop a quick one-page polling website that allows visitors to vote on how to solve the controversy. Put your banner on the website and also code in a pop-under page to expose visitors to your site every time the visitor leaves the polling website.

Now call the local newspaper (or write a press release) and let them know about your voting site. Recently a fellow in Alabama took advantage of the local college quarterback controversy and put up a site called WhichQuarterback.com, Wrote a press release and received over 3,000 visitors overnight.

Strategy #7 – Free Site

Develop a FreeYourTown.com site which posts coupons, free offers, and discount services of local vendors. You can charge the vendors for placing coupons on the site and of course your links and banners will be on the front page because you are the primary caretaker of the site.

Make sure you get a lot of free publicity for the site. You might even ask your advertisers to giveaway handouts about the site to their customers. Have your FreeYourTown.com site sponsor local youth sports teams with the domain name on the back of their shirts.

Strategy #8 – Local Exit Traffic Exchange

Start a local exit traffic exchange between local vendors. Once a visitor leaves the site of one local vendor, an exit popup or popunder appears of a second local vendor.

The more local vendors you sign up, the more traffic everybody gets. Make sure you sign up vendors that only do business locally.

Another twist to this strategy is to develop an exit newsletter signup form. Once a local visitor exits the site, a newsletter signup form pops up offering the visitor the opportunity to sign up to newsletters generated by local merchants.

Strategy #9 – Joint Email Endorsed Mailings

Simply partner with another local vendor whose services you trust and would recommend and suggest a joint-email endorsed mailing. You send an email endorsing your partner’s services with a link to her site and she sends an email to her customer base endorsing your services with a link to your site.

Choose partners whose customers would benefit and potentially purchase your product and service. In email marketing, as well as direct post mail marketing, the list determines, in large part, the success of the offer.

Strategy #10 – Search Engine

Optimize your website for your product or service and the name of your town or city. Many times I have found suppliers in my own small town using the Internet that fulfilled my requirements.

Conclusion

All it takes is a little creativity and effort to draw attention and visitors to your website. Of course you could just spend a lot of money and advertise your website address but the most successful, low cost, alternatives to drawing traffic to your website are joint ventures with local business people who also have a web presence.

In fact, it doesn’t even have to be with local businesses. Local high schools and churches are always looking for different fundraising and promotional activities.

I purposely didn’t include the strategy of putting your website address on all your promotional materials. It’s not that I forgot it. I figure that strategy is just a given. If you’re going to have a website, put it everywhere you would normally have your business name.

Some of these strategies are easier than others and produce better results than others, but they all are viable and absolutely doable. Your website can be a powerful marketing tool. Now that you’ve made an investment in your website, you might as well get the most out it.

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Networking and Building Relationships

Posted on July 28, 2010 by admin

By Carmen Cheung & Denise Savello

As a new small business owner in Las Vegas you must be overwhelmed with opening up your business and taking care of everything that will help you be successful in your trade.  So the last thing you want to think about is where your customers will be coming from although a big concern and after all they are the reason why you are opening up your business in the first place.  Of course, just opening up your business and hoping that people will come in flocks is a little far fetch.  So what should you do to promote your business?

Marketing would be a good place to start.  If people don’t know about what your business is about then they won’t be able to utilize your services or buy your products because there is no awareness is built towards what you have to offer.  Networking is an aspect of marketing that can create a loyal customer database and help you build relationships with people at local events.  Not only does it give you a chance to meet people who are prospects for your business but it can create word of mouth among these people.  Word of mouth is a very strong marketing tool because people like to try things that their friends and family has used before.  They trust their friends and family so when a product or service is recommended by people that are close to them they are more likely to try that product or service.  The Las Vegas market has many networking events to choose from.  There are networking events for website designers and graphic designers as well as women-based networking events.  A simple search in the Las Vegas Business Press can direct you to over a hundred networking events that take place every day in all areas of Las Vegas and Henderson.

Another wonderful tool that the Las Vegas business community has is Meetup.com.  Meetup.com is utilized all over the world but here in Las Vegas, many small and large businesses used Meetup to find networking groups as well as host their own.  Just logon to Meetup.com, create a simple profile, and start searching for business networking groups and many pop up.  Now the key is trying to manage which meetup events you want to attend as a new business owner.

Another good way to network would be to attend local events that relates to your business.  If you have the power to do it be the one to set up the event.  Attendees will appreciate your efforts and remember your business which creates a strong tie with you and your business.  This in turn will create word of mouth for your business and when they need services or products that you sell they will come to you for what they need.

Verge Marketing Group is a full service marketing company that can help you set up events for your business.  On behalf of Verge Marketing Group, we welcome you to the business community of Las Vegas.  It has proven to be a wonderful community for us and our clients!  We offer many services that can be bundled up or utilized separately depending on what your business needs are.  Please contact us for a free consultation for your business today at (702) 949-0890 or info@vergemarketinggroup.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Please visit our website at www.vergemarketinggroup.com.

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Verge at LVBNM 4th Anniversary!

Posted on July 27, 2010 by admin

At Verge Marketing Group, we make it a point to attend as many social and networking events as we possibly can. We were fortunate enough, today, to take out entire team to the Las Vegas Business Networking Mixer’s 4th Anniversary event at the Sun Coast in Summerlin.

In addition to running into many of our friends and business associates we met some new amazing business owners!

We want to congratulate everyone that was honored at the event.  Thank you to Sylvester and Paula Jackson for creating so many opportunities for business to grow – it’s amazing what you have accomplished in just 4 years!

We had the opportunity to briefly hear from Jordan Wirsz of Jordan Wirsz International – a powerful speaker and business and life coach.  He has the most amazing program and we encourage each of you to attend his next event!

For more information about any of this please contact us directly at (702) 949-0890!

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Welcome to vTalk

Posted on July 20, 2010 by admin

Hey there!  Thanks for taking a look at vTalk – this blog is our outlet to share interesting advertising stuffs.  For the next several weeks we’ll be talking about Michael Newman’s book: The 22 Irrefutable Laws of Advertising (and When to Violate Them). We’ll explore the use of humor, simplicity, love, emotion, topicality and execution (and many more!).

We’ll send out a Facebook update and a “tweet” on Twitter to let you know when more information has been posted!

If you’re not already following us on Twitter or fans of ours on Facebook start today!  You’ll be able to stay informed about how to effectively advertise your business!

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