To grow your business you need to build a database of potential clients that you can promote your services/products to. One of the easiest way to do this is to have a free offering with a “call to action” on your website. A free offering could take the form of an article, sample product, white paper, blog, first few chapters of your book, discount for your products and services and the list goes on.
A “call to action” is something that encourages people to want to learn more about you, your business or your services. Potential customers come to your website to learn more about you, so if you have something that is “free” that will give them further knowledge about your experience or skills in that particular field, you will find that they may download your offering to feel confident in their purchase or to get further details about you.
When you put a “call to action” on your website it is usually done in the format of a contact form. This form can be integrated into Mailchimp. Mailchimp is a free program (yeh!) that assists you in being able to keep all your contacts in one spot. You can build your list up to 2000 contacts, and once your list hits this amount of people there is a monthly fee charged. For most small to medium sized businesses this is a program they can use for years without a fee which is a great marketing tool.
Once you have the person’s name and email address, their details go straight into Mailchimp and this sets up a list of people that are potentially interested in your product or services. With this list you can then send further information to your potential clients through Mailchimp. Mailchimp asks potential clients to verify that they would like to be added to the list and this way you have asked for permission to send them further details about your services. This means that your marketing to them is verified and not seen as spam. Your potential clients can opt out at any time after this.
The first step that you would do is to set up a list in Mailchimp that links to your website. Your website administrator would use a Mailchimp plugin and can set this up in your website. Other administrators who have experience in this area using WordPress and Mailchimp Integration, can also set this up for you (often at a cheaper rate). Once your list is set up you can then integrate the form into your website.
The second step in setting up Mailchimp, is to choose templates that you can use to set up regular communication with clients. These templates can be customised to include your logo, business details and further information for potential clients…..oh gosh there is so much to tell you about this area!
Stay tuned to hear more in my next post on Mailchimp Templates – how to create templates that add credibility to your business.