Getting your audience interested from the start
Cold calling and writing hundreds of emails are standard practices for getting customers, but are they effective?
That’s the debate, particularly when it comes to marketing and securing a target audience,
on this episode of Put That Coffee Down with Kevin Hill and Blythe Brumleve.
Hill and Brumleve point out some good tips for preparing yourself for customer prospecting: Do your research, understand the platform you plan to use for outreach and gather good questions to ask the person you reach.
They cite the Barstool Sports Barstool Fund campaign as a great example of understanding the audience and using that understanding for good.
The Barstool Fund has supported small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic by providing donated money to businesses that apply for aid. This support is “something even the U.S. government hasn’t been able to do,” says Brumleve.
Hill says this is a great example of community sourcing and it has been incredibly impressive to see the support from everyone across the country and to see 100% of the proceeds going directly to those impacted.
Brumleve and Hill also discuss their go-to tools for sales. Those tools range from AI applications installed on a computer to help understand metrics to specialized sales messages using video or GIFs.
Hill says using video is “a good way to convey the hook” because you can introduce yourself and explain your purpose in a way that is more interesting than just a paragraph in an email. He also says the optimal length to capture attention is around 30 seconds. If you don’t have an answer by then, you likely won’t get one.
Sometimes finding the way to set your hook is the hardest part, so Brumleve and Hill outline the seven places to search for attention grabbers. You can look for a hook in your company website, company news alerts, data updates (like FreightWaves’ SONAR), industry news, virtual conferences, podcasts or webinars, and social media.
Brumleve says that with all these options it’s important to try until one sticks. And don’t be afraid to think outside the box.
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