What had the biggest reach at the least cost in your marketing budget ?
What marketing investment or effort for less than $200 gave you the biggest return ?

In our case it is a website:
- $12 for 2 years of domain name at GoDaddy
- $143 for hosting 2 years at Hostgator
- $14 for a design template from ThemeForest
- $0 for the Modx content management system
- $0 for Wordpress blog (download – but a hosted blog can too)
- $30 for paying someone to install all this software

Totals: $199
Of course we don’t count all the hours writing and editing the content.

What was your best spent $200 for marketing ?

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The design of objects
This is a trailer video for “Objectified”: exploring the design of objects that we use every day.
The question posed is:
- How effective is the design of objects.
- How well expresses the design the functionality or purpose.
- How people interpret or assume the use of these objects.
- How much is going to cost.
- How much is the total cost of operations.

The goal of design is not just to make it look good or cool.
The main goals are:
- To let people make the right assumptions about the device or appliance
- To eliminate the unnecessary things or features

Eliminate or block functions or features when they are not needed for operating the device for a certain function or device status.

You don’t need the car key when you are driving: still sits always near you while driving in the ignition key lock: just don’t use it.
However the car doesn’t warn you about or prohibits not using it.

“Objectified” trailer of the movie by Gary Hustwit

Design of software – web services
What applies for devices and appliances should also apply for software and web services.
What a user doesn’t need at a certain moment in an application, he shouldn’t be able to use. Moreover the user should be explained why he cannot use it at a certain moment of operation or status of the device.

Great design of devices, appliances, software and web services is complex and should appear easy and logical to the user: less is more.
Great design will make marketing and sales easier (less) and generate more sales.
Great design isn’t limited to expensive devices or solutions.
Because:
- The design makes your product or solution stand out.
- The use has become more obvious through the design.
- The user can become your advocate promoting your product or solution.
Apple and Ikea know all about this.

How good is the design of your products or solutions ?

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Although we believe in our product (and our customers seem to do so too), we feel the path from website visitor -> to free trial user customer is suboptimal and could / should be improved.
There are enough website visitors; still we have a feeling that the conversion rate could be higher. In order to know you need to measure and to compare different alternatives.

Most visitors either land on our homepage (about 24%), or enter our site through a landing page and pass in many occasions to the homepage during their visit. In any case their next visit will almost certainly start from the home page.

Due to this importance of the home page it is logical we try to enhance the home page. Thus a new home page layout was cooked up based on the original layout.

So far we only changed the top part (above the fold) to be more focused and clean:
- Less information thus more straightforward.
- Less distraction of too many items
- Less keywords in the top fold
- Less screen shots
We’re planning on taking small steps at a time, making sure each step can be measured.

Google Website Optimizer

We placed the 2 pages head to head using Google Website Optimizer, using the free trial page as the goal.

Google Website Optimizer is a free service from Google that enables you to test different pages or parts of pages and find out which converts better.
As you need to be able to make changes to your web pages, so some technical knowledge is required but GWO (as it’s often called) helps you through the process.

The Results

More than the double amount of visitors who passed by the new homepage went on to visit the free trial compared to the original homepage! (Though not sure how many of them will become paying customers – that we’ll see that later on)

When examining the difference between the 2 visitor segments in Google Analytics we were in for even more of a surprise:
The bounce rate has improved 12%: 63% vs 67% (vs 75% for the whole site) -> From 33% to 37% is a 12% improvement!

On the other hand the visitors entering by the new home page spend on average 44% less time during a visit, and visit 17% less pages! This is bizarre – does that mean they are less engaged? Or they understand faster the purpose of LEADSExplorer?
On the contrary, my dear Watson: New visitor rate: 74% vs 89% – a 15% improvement! This means visitors who see the new homepage are more likely to visit multiple times!

Conclusion

People watch less pages and leave our site earlier.
However a lot more of them come back later to continue visiting our site and eventually ask a free trial, or are convinced earlier in their visit to request a free trial.
This is reflected in the ‘Visitor Loyalty’ view of Google Analytics, which really shows a ‘long tail’ of repeat visitors for the new homepage.

Where should we focus next when optimizing our site?
How can we improve the flow from home page or landing page to the free trial?
What makes people decide to sign-up for a free trial?

What are your experiences with Google Website Optimizer?

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Are you proud of the number of products or varieties you’re offering?
Are you convinced offering so many choices actually increases your sales?

You might be wrong!

Behavioural scientists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper conducted a (now classic) study in order to find out if offering too much choice made people indecisive. They set up a booth in a large supermarket, well known for it’s abundance of choice, where shoppers could sample a number of jam flavours all from the same relatively inexpensive brand.

During the study, the number of flavours were varied so that either 6 or 24 flavours were displayed. The selection was rotated hourly. After tasting, shoppers were given a discount coupon. So regardless of the flavours encountered at the booth, shoppers were eventually confronted with the full range of flavours in the aisle.

The results were surprising: of the shoppers passing the extensive selection of jams, 60% stopped vs 40% of those who passed the limited selection.

But from those who were able to sample the extensive selection, only 3% actually bought the jam compared to a staggering 30% from those who had sampled from the 6 flavours.

Overall result is that 6 times as much jam was sold when there were only 6 compared to 24 flavours to sample from!

The researchers suggested that too many choices, although highly appealing at first, might lead to frustration in the decision making process. Too many options to differentiate might result in the customer not being able to engage with the task at hand, leading to an overall reduction in interest in the product and a decrease in sales.

We think there might even be a fear of loss involved: ‘what if I pick the wrong choice?’

When Procter & Gamble reduced the number of Head & Shoulders varieties from 26 to 15, they experienced an immediate 10% increase in sales. Not as dramatic as Sheena and Mark’s jam study, but still too large to go unnoticed.

Offering a limited set of products or services for a market or as a solution will also make it more likely for people to retain the main features and differences.

Offering too few products however might mean you miss a part of the market you are addressing. As usual, finding a good balance is key here.

On the other hand your marketing collateral and website will be less complex as you only need to explain a few products and their differences.

Less products mean:
- Less product development
- Less product maintenance
- Less manuals to write or to keep up to date
- Less product changes in manufacturing
- Less inventories
- Less marketing costs
- Less sales trainings
- Less storage space
- Less raw materials

All of this leads to less overhead costs.
Your lower operational costs can be reflected by lower pricing.
And as a ‘bonus’, you might even make the decision for your customers easier, sell more and win market share!

Have you ever wondered whether you’re giving your customers too much choice?

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Nurturing with newsletters

Newsletters have been praised as the most cost effective method to keep contact with your current and potential customers. This is nurturing your customers with newsletters.
Thus every month or on a regular basis companies try to get your attention by sending you their all important newsletter.
All companies try to sign you up or cheat you in to receive a newsletter from them.

The fivefold newsletter problem

- The abundance of newsletters in the email inbox: all companies think they are important for you.
- The length of the newsletters: too long and the messages are ignored
- The news worthiness: not all companies have real news worth reading every month.
- The images: the planned impact of images misses as many email clients block the download of images.
- The real news message can be lost: the real news is hidden by all the preceding marketing messages.

The two last ones might be the worst cases:
- No images makes the newsletter without content: thus no message.
- due to the fact the customer or potential customer has received already so many newsletters from the company with little interesting content, by the time important news is communicated, hardly anybody will notice and read it.

The promoters of newsletter nurturing will stipulate that your subscribers can unsubscribe easily with every newsletter received. However as people are lazy, it is much simpler for them to just skip or to hit the delete button for every newsletter message.
Still a good newsletter service should provide you with the number of opens.

Keep them hungry: Less is more

Thus if you use newsletters for nurturing purposes, don’t over-nurture your customers as they will become fed up of your content.
Make them stay slim and hungry with short newsletters and few containing interesting content.
Then you will stand a chance to be able to communicate the real news and to nurture when it really matters. Thus keep them hungry for real news.

Only speak out when it is important – as silence is golden too.

How many email newsletters does your company send out?
Any worth reading?
Any customer wins thanks to the newsletters?

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The quote is from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which can be translated as “In the limitation the master shows” or “Less is more”.

Recession matches with “Less is more”

In these times of economic crisis and recession (depression), we all will need to do with less: both as a consumer as in business.
Thus less consumption, less purchasing, less marketing, less cash, less credit.
Less expenses, less products, less services, less sales support, less commissions, lower margins.

However all will require more effort as you will need to bring the same performance in sales and marketing with less support.
Less support like: advertising, trade shows, leaflets, presentations, web seminars.
Same performance: keep the sales coming.
Everything is on a shoestring, except your sales quotas.

As you have to adapt to the change created by the change in both sales and marketing, you should show your “Mastership” for generating leads and sales by using your best capabilities:
- The most cost effective marketing methods.
- The best sales techniques – your best sales skills

Therefore you will need to be inventive and innovative:

In Marketing:

Instead of expensive advertising or emailing campaigns and expensive trade shows or conferences, you will have to use the assets that the company has available at a marginal increase of costs:
like using the website for lead generation more effectively.

In Sales:

Instead of pursuing all possible leads, you should qualify your leads even better as following up leads costs money. The more efficient your lead qualification, the lower the costs of your sales process.

Although lead generation is very opportunistic, improving on your customer retention could be more effective for generating more sales.

Sales and Marketing are all under a tight budget, thus you need to be inventive or innovative by embracing new solutions.

Will you be able to perform the same in Sales and Marketing with less (on a shoestring)?
This is when and where your Mastership will show in both your skills and your innovation.

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Scanning texts instead of reading

It seems that people don’t like to read anymore.
Instead of taking the time for reading, people scan a text or a page in order to absorb as many ideas and concepts in the shortest amount of time.

Currently most websites have plenty of text in order to explain your proposition or solutions in detail.

However people hardly take the time to read all the content of a page.
They read:
- The title
- A few of the headers (paragraph titles)
- A few words
- A look at the image (if present)
These lose items should constitute the subject and message of the text or even tell the story.
The problem related is that due to only reading small parts of the total expose, the message that the reader interprets or thinks he is reading can be differently. So different will be his conclusions.

Less is more like Twitter?

On the other hand people have become more and more comfortable with short messages like Twitter and SMS (Texting).

Twitter limits your messages to 140 characters.
Just 140 characters to explain one item or action.
Apparently people feel comfortable with this limitation.

The same applies for the popular SMS (Texting) messages send by billions of people every day that are 160 characters long.
People find them convenient enough to use and understand these brief messages. Thus why should we put more text and full sentences on a website as no one reads it?

Many short messages in a short time

Apparently people love to absorb many ideas and concepts in a short time. Nothing to do about this as you cannot change human nature.

An enormous amount of information is cropped on one Twitter or friendfeed page.
This allows them to pick up the best ideas or the concepts that suits themselves the best for their own purpose.

SMS your web pages?

Should we change:
- Our website page content into several short 140 or 160 character sentences?
- Making sure that there are only relevant messages to be read
- Each of these 140 or 160 character lines explaining a single feature, function or benefit of the solution or proposition?
- Not more than one statement or fact in one sentence?
- No short cuts to be made that can lead to the wrong information or conclusion?

Would a website with “Twitter-style” web pages be a possibility?
Would this be a good new and convenient format?
Would this convert more visitors into leads? Thus better lead generation?

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The French web developer Mathieu ‘P01′ HENRI has developed for the marketing agency Jung von Matt the smallest adver game ever in order to promote the very small Smart ForTwo.

It is a game in a favicon (short for favorites icon), which is the 16 x 16 pixel in your browser left of the “http://”, mainly used for displaying a tiny company logo.
The game is based upon the well known classical Defender game from 1980.

For those interested in information on the java game read: Defender of the Favicon.

In order to let the public know about the game, every site featuring the favicon game has a supporting banner that explains and indicates the game presence.

Additionally there is the video:

This is not a low cost marketing campaign: development, banners, favicon deployment and a video.

The main idea is to create a buzz by using blogs (like this one) and people telling about it.
The target market consists of consumers interested in a very small car.
However are these consumers visiting the typical automobile websites? Probably not as car websites are mainly visited by people who like more expensive cars.
If the bloggers and journalists should be able to generate a buzz, the campaign could reach the potential customers.
Still measuring the lead generation will be difficult to prove as there seems not to be a direct link to the company or product website: thus no online measurement of the effectiveness of the campaign is possible.

Do you think this campaign will bring interest from potential buyers for the car?

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If unlimited comes for free, then everybody will embrace it as there are no borders, no constraints. Nobody cares as long as they can use it for free.

Pricing model with unlimited use

If people need to pay for an unlimited service, then they feel they will be paying too much as they won’t be able to use the capacity entirely. They feel they are paying for the unconsumed part too.
Customers just want to pay for what they actually use.
Unlimited is beyond their real needs.

Therefore unlimited is not a good value proposition.
If the user cannot use these unlimited amounts he will be looking for alternatives with your competitors or he will stick with a lesser bucket proposition.
Thus you need to limit your service or solution to a certain amount, level or capacity.

Limit is required

In order to comply:
- With human nature
- The parsimony of people
And to avoid pricing or discount discussions.

There has to be a limit of some kind:
- The amounts to be used.
- The capacity.
- The number of users.
- The functionality.
- The features included.

In this case “Less is more” applies:
Even if you could offer “Unlimited use” for the same price, for business reasons you just need to limit the capacity in order to get your customers paying.

Has your (web) service a limitation in the pricing model?

2UnLimited performing “There is no limit”

* Picture by thereallex

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The Product Overview Comparison Chart

Marketing or Product Management spends a lot of time and effort compiling a Product Overview Sheet that allows comparing all of your products or solutions at one glance in order to state clearly all the features, functions and benefits of all products.

At first this seems to be a great tool for selling as you can:
- Inform the potential customer about all possible products
- Offer all possibilities to the potential customer
- Make sure no single solution is overlooked
- Proof the company has wide range of products

However:
- Too much data to absorb by the potential customer: People will remember 3 things max.
- Too much distraction of competing and similar products: “What’s this?”
- Too much possibility to raise interesting questions about the not suited products: “Why you need this?”
- Too much time to explain by the sales reps: “The seventh product is for …”
- Too much choice to choose from: “We like products 2 – 5 – 9 and 3″

In the end the potential customer is overwhelmed by the information but hasn’t got a clue.
The big product overview has the potential customer confused and he doesn’t know anymore about the features, benefits and reasons to buy.

They will probably select a different vendor that proposes the best suited solution as their salesman have extensively inquired, defined the problem and clarified the benefits of their best suited solution.
Less is more.

The added value of the sales rep.

Using the Product Overview Comparison Chart the role of the sales rep. is reduced to send or bring the comparison sheet and walk through the different options and alternatives.

However the sales rep. has a different role:
- To listen to the potential customer
- To asses the problem(s)
- To define possible solutions
- To present one best solution accompanied by one or two alternatives.

This is where sales rep. are:
- Bringing additional value for the potential customer.
- Limiting the choice to a limited number of products or solutions.
- Builds confidence and a relationship
- Could speed up the buying process

He can position:
- The best product (for both parties)
- Give the customer one or two alternatives in order to have the freedom of choice.
It is like a magician presenting you a hand with three cards and he knows the one you will be picking.
Less is more.

What to do with a Product Overview Comparison Chart?

Thus instead of presenting the great Product Overview Comparison Sheet, keep it internally for sales trainings in order to explain to your sales people or resellers what they should know and how to find the best solution for their potential customer.

A products comparison sheet is a D-I-Y (Do-It-Yourself) solution, to be used in a sales process without a sales rep. like catalog or online sales.

The sales rep can present parts of the Product Overview Comparison chart to differentiate 2 or 3 products, but not to offer the complete offering of a company.

The first rule in sales is to build trust with your potential customer, so don’t confuse them with a gigantic Product Overview Comparison Chart.

Confused people don’t buy.
Confident people buy (from trusted parties or parties that seem trust worthy).

Ever killed your sales with a Product Overview Comparison Chart?

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Drip marketing

Drip marketing: send information by mail or email on a regular basis in order to keep potential customers aware of your progress or successes. The goal is to keep interest and make sure the lead or customer will not forget about your company or offering when he is deciding to buy.

Dripping to search engines

Instead of putting several pages online at one single time, it is more effective to publish one page at a time and wait until Google has visited again to put the next page online.

A new page is considered by Google as interesting. Search engines like websites that change.
Many new pages at one time is overwhelming and you can only produce a certain amount of content.
Thus you can’t feed the search engines anymore: they are like vampires needing blood (content) every time.

Google interprets regular updating as a busy site that is continuously creating interesting content.
This is like a blog or social website where the content grows daily or slowly.
This is why this blog is located under the domain name www.LEADSExplorer.com by www.LEADSExplorer.com/blog

If you publish all in one go, then there is no more content to be published.
And content is the most difficult to generate.

Thus less is more:
- Less content published on one occasion but regularly
- More interesting in the long run.

Making waves in search engine land

It is like making waves:
One big splash is less effective than many smaller waves that keep coming.
For every page found, a search engine needs to analyze the content and allocate keywords in their enormous data bases. These are the waves created by each page and that roll like a wave into the memory of the search engines.
If you have one big amount of content, then there is only one big wave into the system.

The search engines favor collaboration and democracy, one page at a time comes closest to this, whereas multiple pages at one time is more like dictatorship.

Collaboration:
- The internal (inbound) and external (outbound) links: you can provide the internal ones
- Participation by multiple contributors: not feasible

Democracy:
- Increase of content page by page
- Book marking and voting on social websites: your book markers need to cope with the amount of content

Collaboration: Never forget to link pages internally with 3 or 4 links by page in order to show the relations and the close relatedness of the content. Unlinked pages as considered as loose ends, thus with less value for the entire site as these are not related.

Dripping to Google, Yahoo, MSN Live is effective now, until Google & co change their algorithms as with all SEO and SEM tricks.

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During a recession market research is important as explained in the previous post.
As budgets are tighter or you need to limit your expenses, you will minimize spending on market research.
In order to do so, you can start to look on and use the Internet.

1. Spying your competitors:
Look into their websites and search on the Internet in order to find traces of their new initiatives.
Compare functions and features of your competitors in a spreadsheet.
If they are traded on the stock market, listen to their quarterly earnings conference call or read their quarterly reports.

2. Investigating the market:
Search the Internet in general for conferences or events in order to gather relevant information for free. This is not the same as attending conferences, but it is at a much lower cost and requires less time.
Search for presentations from conferences or events to look into the messages inside.

3. Listen in to webinars
Signup for webinars from consulting companies in need for customers, or even web conferences from your competitors.
You can always try to pose questions which might give you answers as people always tell more than planned.

4. Spy your customers and leads on your website:
Analyze the search queries of your website visitors, in order to know what they are looking for when they arrive on your website. For this purpose additional content related to your products and services will bring more visitors, thus also more search terms used.
Organize this search data by business segment, by type of business, split up customers and leads in order to get an overview and spot a trend. (This requires a service that reveals the company names of your website visitors like LEADSExplorer)

5. Blogging for reactions:
If the company has a blog, new ideas and concepts can be explained and explored, having reactions measured if there are any comments upon your blog posts.
However these new ideas are also available to your competitors, who will be grateful for your initiative and will investigate in the reactions of the public including your customers.

6. Search social media and blogs:
Search social media for statements related to your business and the sub seeding comments.
Search blogs and review the comments made in order to grasp the tendencies and the changes in the market.

7. Generate responses on social media
Use social media, as an individual not related to your company, to:
- Pose questions
- Make interesting or bold statements
- Challenge people
in order see what reactions these generate.
Of course as comments are posted only by a minority of people, this is not always representative for the whole population. Still it can bring forward good indicators of future trends or current mindset.

8. Use RRS feed filtered using Yahoo pipes
There is too much information available on the Internet.
There are too many RSS feeds that can be interesting.
Use Yahoo Pipes to aggregate, mashup and filter out the interesting posts on keywords.
Just like this example of sales and marketing blog aggregation
That should keep you up-to-date at no cost.

9. Do not spend on industry analyst reports
By not buying reports from Forrester Research, IDC, Gartner, Butler group, Ovum, Yankee Group, Aberdeen Group, Celent, Bloor, Datamonitor, Frost & Sullivan, JupiterMedia, Patricia Seybold Group, Saugatuck Technology, Yankee Group, you will save a lot of money.
They have been interpreting the facts, figures and events just like you do and probably as biased.
On one hand they have more overview on the market, but you are in the business and you meet customers expressing their needs.

Still if you can get a copy of a research on the Internet for free then read it.

Even on no budget market research can be done in order not to miss completely on the next new or improved product or solution.
The main expense is of course your priceless time. Less is more?

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The short sales pitch

Can you define in one short sentence:
- The problem and the solution your company delivers?
- The main benefit or benefits of the solution?
No?
Then just question yourself: How will your internal promoter or influencer be able to sell to his CEO, VP Sales, COO, CFO, CIO, CTO, or any other CxO?

Thus you are in trouble for progressing in the sales process and getting sales.

The shorter the better is not only for yourself, but also for the internal promoter of your solution or the influencer, as he has to reproduce your sales pitch. Less is more.

You have “won” the internal promoter or influencer

You have convinced a high placed person in the potential customer company organization. He is completely in favor of your proposed solution. You “won” him.
a) You have obtained an internal promoter for your solution or product. Great achievement!
b) You have convinced the influencer for your solution or product. Great achievement!

Difference internal promoter and influencer

There is a difference between internal promoter and influencer:
The internal promoter is involved in the solution with responsibility as his team or division will need to use it. Thus in the end the best solution will bring him indirectly a personal benefit in his work environment.
Whereas an influencer is in a staff function with no operational responsibility. He has recognition within the organization for his knowledge and experience on many matters.

Train how to sell

Now you need to make sure he is trained in selling your solution internally. You have to train him in selling. Thus you need a short sales pitch as your chances to train him are limited in time.
Again the shorter and more clearly stated your short sales pitch is, the easier to train him.

Or would your “man” be able to reproduce this?

The meeting problem

Consider two different kinds of meetings:
- A face to face meeting with his superior (CxO) he has to explain is just a few words the purpose of your solution or product and the benefits. The CxO hasn’t all day and his mind is set on other things (closing of the quarter, stock price, his new car)
- A meeting with several staff members and the CxO, your man needs has to hold his short pitch. Interest will fade away quickly if the pitch is to long or to complex. And the more remarkable the better.

In both cases he needs to state very clearly and convince the others about your product or service.
In both cases he needs to get the attention and keep the attention.
He needs to be interesting in his sales pitch.
You have no control and no possibility to interfere in this internal sales pitch.

If he stumbles on his wording
- or isn’t capable of describing the problem, the solution or the method to address the problem
- or takes shortcut in his expose nobody understands
- and making the business benefits clear, then you have lost your sales or it will be delayed for a long time. As it will be labeled as “Not interesting”.

So how goes your short sales pitch?

Write it down and make it shorter.
Eliminate the obvious, add the specific.
Make it remarkable in order to have internal promoters or influencers remember it after the meeting with you. This requirement is even more needed for the meeting of your internal promoter or influencer with the CxO or staff members meeting with the CxO.

Just write down your short sales pitch and notice how many sentences it requires.

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Kevin Sasser in The Sales Wars blog says although many sales methodologies like solution selling, spin selling, strategic selling , selling to the vito (Very Important Top officer) exists and are promoted, the fundamental answer to success in sales is: G.T.T.F.P.Q.

Get To The Freaking Point Quickly

He questions why a potential buyer should care about the:
- Company history
- Existing customers
- Profile of executives and founders
- Analyst views
- Vision of the company
during the sales presentation or pitch?

Why be boring?
Why be bore your audience, when they are listening?
After all the money spent and all the efforts you have gone through for lead generation, cold calling, direct mailing campaigns, emailing campaigns, trade shows, conferences, setting the appointment you don’t deliver. What a waste!

Be happy: you have the appointment and the audience is listening.

Limited number of messages
People can only understand and absorb 2 or 3 messages at a time.
Thus if you waste these 2 or 3 during the intro of the company, then the real important messages on the product or solution are lost.

Grab the attention

In order to grab the attention immediately by telling or explaining:
- How to solve one or several problems of the company problems: tangible benefit
- How to make/save money for the company: tangible benefit
- How to make life better for management: intangible benefit

We would like to add to this:
- Bring something remarkable for them into the conversation: amaze, astonish or excite them
- Show them you understand their complete picture: maybe you are giving away free consulting
- Find a personal benefit for the decision maker (intangible benefit)
- Make ‘em laugh (intangible benefit)

Keep the pitch short

The main advice is to keep the pitch short.
Just claim your intention of the purpose of the discussion and ask for confirmation of this goal.
All of the points in the discussion during the meeting should relate to these.

Keep it simple, to the point and short – less is more.
So we named this Get-to-the-Point selling.

How to know what the lead needs?

In order to start your To-the-Point sales talk without loosing time as suggested by Kevin Sasser in G.T.T.F.P.Q., you better have:
- Investigated on the company upfront: The good, The bad and The ugly.
- Investigated on the people you meeting with: what are their drivers or hurdles?
- Know what they have been looking for on your website
in order to present exactly the solution they need.
All these investigations are supported by LEADSExplorer.

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Machine gun marketing

A machine gun is a fully-automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rifle cartridges in quick succession.

Machine gun marketing is fully-automatic sending of large amounts of emails: email marketing.

- You send thousands of emails to people you don’t know.
- You use your own email lists (exhaustive) and probably bought opt-in lists.
- You send messages with subjects, the majority of the addressees don’t want to know about at this moment.
OR
- You hire a call centre to call decision makers in companies from a purchased list.
- You have written a script for the operators on a subject that might not be of interest.

This is like shooting with a machine gun: hardly hitting anybody as it is like a spray of bullets.
You might get a few replies or hits on your website, but you have big overhead.

Moreover the next time you send an email with an interesting subject, the addressees could ignore it completely.
OR
People will click on the link, but bounce immediately as they misinterpreted the email or don’t relate their problems to the content of the landing page.
OR
When you call those who have been selected by the operators, they seem to have a different need.

Sniper rifle marketing

A sniper rifle is a rifle used to ensure accurate placement of shots at greater ranges than other small arms. A typical sniper rifle is built for optimal levels of accuracy, fitted with a telescopic sight and chambered for a military centrefire cartridge.

You could also target only those companies who have shown interest by visiting your website.
- You will send messages with the best suited message based upon the pages visited on your website.
These companies are a very precise target.
OR
- You call the decision makers from these companies personally with all your sales skills for knowing if there is a fit or a possible interest.

This is sharp shooting emails or cold calls, like shooting with a sniper rifle.

You will be very effective in generating visits or replies to your communication.
Thus very efficient lead generation: more leads, less work.

Less is more

So what is the most efficient lead generation?
Addressing those companies who have shown interest in your products or services by the visits they have paid to your website.
This is the advantage LEADSExplorer by providing the benefit of being more successful at less effort, less costs, less time.
Less is more.

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