Spellmann

How to Choose the Trade

Description

Generating leads with your website is critical. After all, a good website should be a lead generation “machine!” In this video, Eric Spellmann explains how to convert anonymous website visitors into qualified leads. By using “The Trade,” a business can easily double or even triple the number of leads they receive from their site. And, without sounding creepy, learn how to use the inherit “pain and desire” of your customers to motivate them to action!

Transcript

Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice! Hey guys it’s Eric Spellmann, here to talk to you about online marketing. Now this video is going to be almost an extension of the previous video. In the previous one we talked about how to generate leads using your website. And at the end I kind of teased in order to do that, you need something called the Trade. Well this video is all about the Trade.
Trust me, this is to be one of the best videos you’ll watch on this subject. So let’s begin. But before we do, in case you didn’t see the previous video, let’s go over a few of the more important things about generating that lead.

Number one, visitors are anonymous. Everyone who visits your site, you have no idea of knowing who they are. So, the only way you’re going to find out who they are, the only way you’re going to get these leads is by convincing them to contact you.

Finally, the only way they’re going to contact you is if they want to. People aren’t just going to fill something out because you asked. And so that’s why we have something called the Trade. While people will not give you their personal information just because you asked for it, they will TRADE for it. Now, coming up with the proper trade is the key. And if you do this trust me, you put it on your website, you build this right, you’re going to be getting leads every week. That’s just how it works. So, let’s start with where it begins.

Number one, you’ve got to get inside their head. In order to understand what your trade is going to be, you have to understand what your customers thinking about, as it relates to what you offer. In other words, what is their pain point? I often ask people, I say “Okay when your customers are trying to think about doing business with you or someone in your industry, what is their pain point?”

I’ll give you a good example because some of you must be going “What do you mean by that?” A realtor. How to choose a realtor? So when we built realtor websites, or a good realtor website might have a question on there that speaks to the pain point. Now what is the pain point?

When people want to buy a house, it is one of the largest financial transactions they will ever do. So theres a lot of nervousness. So they sit up late at night thinking, they can’t go to sleep, thinking how do I pick a good realtor? How do I know if I’m going to get the right price for my house? How do I know I’m not paying too much? etc etc. All these questions, these are called pain points.

And so what I am saying is, as it relates to your product, as it relates to your service, what are the pain points? What are the things people worry about as it relates to choosing someone in your industry? Figure that out, write them down.

Now once you do that, you might also consider “Well we’re not going to get so negative here. May we also want to go on the positive.” So what do they desire. Because everyone makes a decision in the marketing world based on either the avoidance of pain or a desire for something. Okay. The avoidance of pain is one of the big ones, like in a realtor. But sometimes, people will choose to give you their information if there’s something they desire. Good example of the trade in this case is whenever you go to any conference and you go to the vendor booth area, you’ll always see some little fish bowls.

Now those fish bowls are full of business cards. Now how did that vendor convince someone to put their business card with all their contact information in that fishbowl? Because that vendor was having a contest, for an iPad for something. Or the vendor handed them a koozie or coffee cup in exchange for that.

In other words, the customers’ desire for something of value was worth the trade of giving their personal information. So, the trade could also be an offer of information. It could be an offer of something. So, decide whether you’re going to operate either from pain or from desire. And that’s a strange way of putting it. And by the way, some businesses can do both! And large corporations definitely know how to do both!

So once you kind of figure out some of those pain points, some of those things that customer may desire out of it, usually it’s either savings of money or an increase in money, then what I want you to do is generate the top 10. Now listen up, this is the key.

So let’s go back to my realtor example. So, people are nervous about finding the realtor who can get the most money for their house. Well, that would be a pain point. So, what you might do is if I were talking to you as a realtor, I would say “Okay I want you to give me a PDF or Microsoft Word Document. And I want you to give me the top 10 mistakes you can’t afford to make when choosing a realtor.” That’s the title.

And you put that on your website so that people can see it. And then on their homepage, you put a big old call to action, a big old button, download our big report “Top 10 mistakes you can’t afford to make when choosing a realtor”. Now that would be a pain point call to action. Or maybe on the button, if you want to go on the desire side of it, you could say “The top 10 ways to increase the value of your house 25% in 20 minutes!”

I mean something like that. You come up with a document that speaks to either one of those. That’s it. Now the reason you do this, is because if someone lands on your website, that call to action button is going to speak to them because that’s what’s going on in their head as it relates to your industry.

Now this doesn’t just apply to realtors. This can apply to any industry. And in fact, the larger the financial transaction, the larger the amount of money you are asking, the easier it is to generate this. So keep in mind people have fears and they have desires as it relates to your products and your services. Come up with that top 10. And then test it.

Get advice from some of your people and say “Hey if you saw this button over here that said, The top 10 blah blah blah. Will you click on that?” And if they say yes then maybe that’s one to use. And keep in mind you can changes these out and use them. I have something similar on my website ericspellmann.com, so feel free to go check it out. You can see how I am using them.

So, once you have the top 10, what happens at that point? So someone goes to the website, they click on the button and read the top 10. Now at that point you have just given them good information. Now they have information where they can make a better decision as it relates to your product or service.

You’ve blurred the line a little bit between vendor and salesman. And in fact the law of reciprocation kicks in, they kind of owe you a little something. And that’s where we go to next. This is the KEY! You’re probably saying “Eric you just gave valuable information to a complete stranger and you never asked for their information!” That’s right, but this is where things change.

Because at this point, you offer them the big gift. Okay. So we’ve got them to click. We’ve got them to go past the home page. We’ve now got their interest, we’ve got their attention. And in fact, we gave them something with no requirement in return. So now we offer them something bigger.

So in the case of a realtor it might be “Hey! We have a welcome to Amarillo (or welcome to your city or welcome to Los Angeles) pack that we’d love to mail it to you, or email it to you. It has all the schools etc etc. And all we ask is a little bit of information so we can send it to you.”

Now as I mentioned in the generating leads video, we only ask for 4 things. Name, email, phone and maybe a questions or comments. Just 4 things. All we need is enough information to contact them. So we offer them the big gift. And the big gift needs to be of greater value than what we first offered them. And it needs to be something substantial.

So think of what that would be. Usually it could be something that you could either mail through the postal service. Or it might be something like an informative PDF or a big white paper or a big book, e-book or something. Now I prefer the electronic types of trades because they don’t cost you something. And if they decide to print it out, it’s at their cost not yours.

But the key is entitling it and the key is in giving them good data. You need to offer them something. You know, insurance companies, their secondary give, what they generate their leads for, their big gift is a price quote. And so when they do a price quote, you have to fill in information. So when you think you’re filling in that information for the price quote, and in fact it’s really for a lead. So, that is what we call the big gift. So think of the initial, and then you offer the big one but you need information to send it.

Some people say “Eric why not just ask for the big one first?” Well because of that little thing I mentioned in the other video. Theres a little thing called the trust barrier, and people aren’t just going to give you their information when you promise them. Theres no trust yet. And so by giving them the free one first, you’ve already established at least enough trust to ask for that minute amount of information for the lead. So, hopefully you’ve gotten it, hopefully you get it.

So, here’s the strategy. You get your top 10. You have a nice call to action on your homepage. They click on it, you give it to them. They feel “Wow that was cool. They’ve helped me.” Second, you offer them something bigger. But it’s something you need to email to them or mail to them or something like that, and that becomes your lead. Now once you get that, you need to call them within 12 business hours like I mentioned. And that’s how you get this going. Trust me, this works. I use this myself. And a lot of my clients do also.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to give me a call, please don’t hesitate to email me. Let me know, I’d be happy to help. And as always, you can see all of my videos at ericspellmann.com. And if you need a speaker, I do that. I speak at a lot of conferences, so let me know I’d be happy to maybe come speak to your group.

If you received this by email, and you think someone else might be helped, feel free to forward that email on and have em subscribe at my website. I hope this has been helpful. I’m Eric Spellmann, I’ll see you in cyberspace.