Know-How Exchange : Strategy

A few thoughts:

First, put as much as it takes to get them to convert ... no more.

Second, this is testable. You can promote different versions in an A/B test, then go with whichever one does best. And then create a new challenger and test that against your winner. Repeat as often as you can, so you keep getting a more effective offer.

Now for the real question: Once you have the names in your database, what will you do with them? Do you have a plan for converting the "free offer" takers into paying clients? In the end, that's what counts.

The team at SymVolli recently offered a number of downloads from their company website. There were white papers, in depth articles and a single page crib sheet for getting to grips with sales performance management and sales forecasting. Have a look at https://www.symvolli.com/company/article_downloads.aspx

Surprisingly the lowest cost option produced the greatest number of downloads.

Another tactic, used to great effect by Lynx PR – Pam, the girl who set up Lynx was my PR and Advertising manager. Pam – if you are reading the, you rock! Sorry as I was saying her tactic was to send out half of a slide-rule which was designed to allow engineers to carry out flow and pressure calculation whilst sizing a valve.

She mailed about 300 engineers directly and got a 66% positive response which is utterly staggering. Never mind that these guys had palm tops and notebooks – the calculator didn’t need to be booted up every time they wanted to use it!

If you could tel us what line of industry you are in, we night be able to be of further assistance.

For example, I am a great fan of those expanding cards which start off the size of a credit card and once unfolded, due to incredibly high quality of the printing can show information which is of permanent use to your clients. See:

https://www.curveballprintmedia.com/

For example, if you were selling to laboratory workers, then the periodic table of the elements is a good starting point. You can provide the incentive to giving you their details in return for another card with a higher preserved value. You could do this via your website to facilitate the task.

As I have guessed that you are in Marketing Services, the content of the first card could be a ROI chart for common marketing initiative and the incentive to contact you a card showing how to avoid common blunders in sales and marketing.


Best wishes


Steve Alker
Xspirt

I think there are some really valuable contributions from the experts above.

But for me there is one key point: Just because you are selling marketing coaching services potentially to ANY of these kit recipients, that doesn't mean there is one neat piece of collateral or some cool gizmo that's going to get your phone ringing.

You've got to find something - some things - that are going to strike a chord with each recipient, one at a time.

So you need to have YOUR audience segmented down in some way that makes sense for certain types of premiums or promotional items that makes sense to them. As Steve says, lab workers might like a new periodic table. But send that to marketers in Financial Services, and they will be baffled by it.

To sum up: You need to understand your audience well enough to know what you're sending them will be appreciated enough for them to make the call to you.

Good luck.

ChrisB