IT Marketing: Learn More about Marketing in Tough Economic Times with Audio Training Seminars

Whether you live in the United States … or any other part of the world, you know we are living in a time when the economy is less than predictable and IT marketing can be difficult when people are unsure about investing. If you are running your own IT business, you need to be able to plant the seeds for your future business development activities no matter WHAT the state of the economy.

Now more than ever you CANNOT afford to procrastinate finding more clients with a well-crafted IT marketing plan if you are serious about growing your business. That’s why the Computer Consulting Kit offers an information-packed audio training seminar to help you with your lead generation activities with over a dozen field-tested, low-cost, high-impact techniques that can help you find great clients even when times are tough.

IT Marketing Tips You Will Learn:

1. How to get more word-of-mouth referrals … even if you have been out of touch with contacts for months and YEARS;

2. How to find the huge service revenue opportunities that are around you on a daily basis;

3. Why preparing IT marketing materials the right way will help you boost the number of prospects you can turn into great clients;

4. How you can avoid making rookie mistakes during sales calls;

5. Where you can get much, MUCH more help with your IT marketing campaign.

To learn more about this IT marketing audio training opportunity, visit the attached link!

Submitted By: Computer Consulting Kit

IT Marketing: Find Great Clients -- Even During Difficult Times -- with Special Audio Training Seminars

In today’s challenging economy, as a small business computer consultant you need to have the IT marketing skills to recruit new clients no matter what the climate is.

The Computer Consulting Kit offers an hour and fifteen minute-long audio training seminar to help you with your IT marketing skills so you can attract the best clients possible for your business. You need to make sure you know how to constantly look out for new client business opportunities and contribute directly to your future IT marketing activities.

This information-packed IT marketing training seminar helps you organize your lead generation activities with over a dozen field-tested, low-cost, STRONG techniques for finding new clients in challenging times.

Here are just a few things you will learn:

1. Getting more word-of-mouth referrals, even if you haven’t been in touch with your contacts in months or years;

2. Uncovering service revenue opportunities that are in your everyday environment;

3. Preparing IT marketing materials that will really boost your prospect numbers and help you convert more of them into long-term clients, committed to your computer consulting firm;

4. The number one mistake consultants make during sales calls and how you can avoid it;

5. Rising above your competitors using very simple customer service techniques that will help you gain loyalty and trust with new clients.

Today we talked about IT marketing audio training from the Computer Consulting Kit and how you can learn how to boost your client acquisition strategies even during the most challenging times. To learn more about this topic and how you can access lots of valuable audio training seminars, visit the attached link!

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

IT Marketing and the Computer Consulting Kit: The New Client Sales Call

The Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course offers many templates to help you with IT marketing and sales. One important element of computer consulting is your sales call with a new client.

While you might not think having a template to guide a phone call saves that much time, it has many benefits that can help keep you efficient and consistent with your IT marketing campaign.

Benefits of Using a Template for Your New Client Sales Call

It helps you look professional.

It keeps your sales presentation organized so you don’t accidentally get blind-sided by excessive client questions.

It helps you guide the conversation from free to fee so you can tell when you’re moving into “paid technology assessment” territory.

It creates clear boundaries for your prospects to distinguish between an IT marketing sales call and an actual professional consultation, so you can tell for sure when it’s time for them to start paying for services.

The IT marketing initial sales call template helps maintain a structure so you can stop the call from going on too long.

The Main Idea about the New Client IT Marketing Sales Call Template

Today we talked about how you can benefit from creating a template for your new client sales call. To learn more about how you can use this valuable IT marketing tip, visit the attached link.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

IT Marketing: Get More from Those Direct Mail Postcards!

A big problem that can happen when computer consultants put together a direct mail postcard campaign as part of their IT marketing plan is a lack of urgency. Without urgency, prospects – even those with a need and interest in hiring you – will have no reason to do so right now. Your card will get filed away indefinitely.

However, if your prospect receives a postcard that says your company is offering a free system analysis to the first 25 people that respond in your greater area, there’s much more of a reason to act on that IT marketing postcard. They might think to themselves that their computers ARE really screwed up and that free system analysis with no obligation is a really great deal. They’ll be more likely to call you NOW.

IT Marketing: You Need to Limit Your Response

If you don’t want to limit the number of people that respond to your IT marketing postcard, limit the date by which they have to respond. Urgency and scarcity are critical to a high response rate. If you want someone to act NOW, you need to give them a clear deadline by which to respond.

The Experts Know Best

If you need help designing your IT marketing postcards, talk to an expert. This will be a copywriter or someone retired from working with direct response vehicles for a large company. If you ask for advice from just a general business owner, you’re not going to get very far. You need someone that comes from a mail order background, direct mail background or that does a lot of online advertising, has worked for an advertising agency or has dealt in direct selling with measured response.

The Key to IT Marketing

Remember – your direct mail postcard campaign is about creating a sense of urgency, scarcity, deadlines and having compelling headlines and a handle on a source of pain. Motivate your potential clients to act NOW or NEVER!

Added By: Joshua Feinberg

IT Marketing: Do You Know the Decision Makers?

If you want to really grow your computer consulting business, you need to get out and do some IT marketing in the community through networking. You need to meet other people that are decision makers for small businesses.

If you’re targeting the small business owner and manager, you will meet a lot of branch managers from banks (just as an example) … but these won’t really be the decision makers you want to target. You might also meet executive directors from non-profit organizations, but they will not have very much money to spend on IT services. You might also meet people that work for Fortune 1,000 companies with branch offices in your area, but again … these won’t fit your needs.

You need to target the right decision maker with your IT marketing efforts to get the most out of the trade groups and organizations in which you participate.

IT Marketing and Partner Programs

If you want to increase your community presence, join a partner or reseller program. You can join the Microsoft Certified Partner Program, for example. But if you do, you need to be proactive, particularly as a small firm.

Find out who your local field representative is and shake hands, exchange business cards, etc. Make a connection with your field rep. by checking in regularly, sending emails every couple weeks and giving them updates. You should feel free to ask the person questions and brainstorm. Get together for coffee a couple times per year to talk to them about industry and market trends and opportunities as part of your IT marketing efforts.

IT Marketing and the Real Problems

Ask your field rep. if there are any big problems right now that are going around. Does your rep know of any ways you can help with these problems? Or are there any people that belong to channel programs that might like to partner with you? Take full advantage of relationships with local channel representatives to help you find opportunities within your community and develop a truly targeted IT marketing plan.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

IT Marketing and Participating in Organizations

Personal referrals are really powerful tools when it comes to IT marketing because they are pre-sold; they already trust you. When you are building an IT marketing campaign for your computer consulting business you need to know that trust is incredibly important.

How Important is Trust to Computer Consulting?

People will use similar techniques to look for computer consultants that they will use to find a good dentist, attorney, accountant or internist. Some people might go to the Yellow Pages or look in coupon packs or on billboards, but most people will put a lot of weight on word of mouth referrals from people they trust when it comes to choosing key people to advise them on important health, business or financial matters.

You Need to Be Known in Your Community with IT Marketing

You can reach decision makers in small businesses by increasing your personal and business profile in your local community with your target market. This will take some time, but is very possible.

Networking is an important IT marketing strategy that can make or break the success of a computer consulting firm, and it is all about relationships. Your business is a people business … not simply a tech business. It’s about interpersonal skills and trust.

How Do You Get MORE Recommendations with IT Marketing?

Many computer consultants wonder how they can get more personal recommendations. The answer is in knowing more people. You need to join organizations and attend events regularly. Don’t go to every single event – every networking breakfast, luncheon, business after-hours function, etc. – but you have to be ACTIVE and go to many functions throughout the year in order to meet a lot of people and get great referrals that will boost your IT marketing campaign and lead to more long-term clients.

Added By: Joshua Feinberg

IT Marketing and Focusing on Benefits in Your Sales Letter

Regardless of your specialty or niche, you need a sales letter for your IT marketing plan that stresses benefits to clients. While you may have been told previously in your life that business letters need to be short and sweet, this is not always the case.

Use Long Sales Letters for IT Marketing

1. To build urgency.

2. To stir up your pot.

3. To get prospects to take action.

4. To take prospects through the suffering that occurs when they do not do data security right.
5. To help prospects see how great it can be to make their staff more productive.

6. To show prospects how they can benefit and grow their companies 150% to 200% without really adding much more staff.

Address Points of Pain with Prospects

If you are new to writing IT marketing sales letters, you can hire an advertising or marketing consultant or a freelance copywriter to help you. But, regardless of how you approach the letter, you need to understand your prospects’ painful points when it comes to technology in your particular niche.

Provide a Free Offer

In order to get demand up with IT marketing, you may have to send out a letter with your business card that offers a free “bribe” – a free one-hour needs assessment or another service of value to your prospects. Make sure you limit the freebie with a deadline – limit it to the first X number of businesses or put a deadline on it.

If you are considered an IT expert for your niche, your IT marketing letters and calls will be better received. Your expertise will be communicated in the headline and throughout the letter, and you will be offering something completely relevant that most professionals will want.

Your sales letter needs to talk about work you’ve done with other firms like the prospects’ you are addressing (testimonials are important!) and how specifically you can help them. The trends and problems of the industry will mean a lot during this phase of IT marketing.

The goal with your IT marketing sales letter is to move your prospect to the next step, which will most likely be an in-depth IT audit.

Submitted By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

IT Marketing and Public Speaking Events

You can use public speaking events to help with your IT marketing efforts and connect to prospects.

Speaking at the Meetings of Other Groups

When you use other people’s meetings as IT marketing opportunities and speak you get a captive audience. The people there are already at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast or a Rotary Club meeting, and someone else has already sparked their interest and drawn them to the meeting. Your job is to show up and be a compelling featured speaker.

IT Marketing: Speak to Your Audience

You want to talk about a topic that is universal and general enough to appeal to business people. Don’t use IT marketing speak and keep it low-tech, even if the speech is about technology issues (and it should relate in some way).

Make sure the business organizations you choose for furthering IT marketing have similar characteristics to those within your sweet spot. Talk to an executive director or manager to find out before you connect!

Use Free Seminars

You can also get your name out by doing a free seminar on how to protect computer systems from viruses, security breaches and blackouts or some other important topic.

Seminars can be challenging to deliver and execute. Make sure you feel comfortable with the delivery and if possible share the seminar with another speaker within your company to split it up and make it more interesting and varied for attendees. Don’t make the IT marketing seminar longer than 45 minutes.

Get People to Attend Your IT Marketing Seminars

You can generate demand and the RSVPs for free seminars by doing a direct mail piece to a targeted list or a Chamber of Commerce or other organizational list. An effective and low-cost way to mail them is by combining them with a Chamber of Commerce mailing and putting in a flyer when it goes out. This way of spreading the word and generating demand can be a really great IT marketing technique.

Added By: Joshua Feinberg

IT Marketing and Referrals

Referrals are a great IT marketing technique. But how do you ask for them?

The Question about Referrals

One of the best IT marketing questions to ask clients is, “Is there anyone you know that could benefit from your services?” Keep this question in mind at all times and get VERY used to asking it. Ask about friends, family members, business associates, colleagues, vendors … anyone that might benefit from your services.

IT Marketing Techniques: Teach Clients to Know Referrals

You should train your best clients to identify the signs of someone that might need your services. If a client is on the phone and hears someone complaining about slow computers or problems with e-mail, this is an excellent opportunity for a referral. Show your clients you are also appreciative.

Client Surveys

If you want referrals to add to your IT marketing campaign, you can also survey your customers once a year and ask them to list people they might know that would be interested in your services.

You can also send out something more regularly – statement stuffers, etc. A statement stuffer is a card or flier you put in with invoices that talks about how you appreciate referrals and which types of businesses you serve.

IT Marketing and Referral Rewards

If you want to get referrals going, you can start a sophisticated referral program. Let them know you will reward them for referrals they bring you that turn into customers. You can offer rewards such as $100 credit on a client’s account, a $100 gift check or $100 donated to the charity of the client’s choice. Rewards really get referrals, but you have to ask for them often as part of a comprehensive IT marketing campaign.

Blogged By: Computer Consulting Kit

IT Marketing: Seminars and White Papers

If you want to use IT marketing to sell a solution, you have to make others aware they have a problem. Then you have to show people you have the ability to solve the problem in a pain-free, affordable manner that will improve efficiency and bring in a good ROI.

IT Marketing: Seminars

Seminars are great IT marketing strategies because they build awareness. You don’t have to send out salespeople all over town. Instead, you get to talk about the fundamentals to a room full of people at the same time.

Low Pressure

Seminars are much less intimidating to your prospects. If you follow up correctly and put good registration in place and a good method for inviting people, you can do a lot of business from seminars on technology issues that affect your niche.

White Papers and IT Marketing

Publishing a white paper or an e-zine is a great way to capture leads and follow up as part of a comprehensive IT marketing strategy. If you are running a direct mail campaign, one of the best ways to elicit a response is to offer a white paper that has a high perceived value.

You can develop the white paper yourself or outsource it to an experienced freelance writer. You can also adapt something from a reseller program to which you belong. If you regularly do seminars, you can just offer an edited transcript or white paper based on a previous seminar.

Spread the Word with IT Marketing

You can advertise a white paper when doing a display ad or direct mail piece. You give people an excuse to call or go online and request something. And when they request something, you can capture their information and use it as part of your IT marketing procedures.

The Main Idea about IT Marketing

To show prospects how valuable you are, you can make them aware of their problems and how you can solve them through seminars and white papers.

Blogged By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

IT Marketing and Stating Your Specialty

There are two IT marketing techniques you can use to reinforce your specialty to targets and prospects. Case studies and Web sites can paint you as the best solution to prospects’ and clients’ problems.

Case Studies

A case study is a dressed-up testimonial. Typically, it is a picture of the client with a logo, full name, address and contact information. It’s an IT marketing strategy that consists of a few short paragraphs during which your client will talk about the benefits you’ve presented through your relationship with them and an endorsement signed by the client with your contact information at the bottom. If you have two-to-four case studies, they can prove to be a really powerful IT marketing tool.

Web Sites

If you put the right content on your Web site, it will have maximum impact as an IT marketing technique. Don’t advertise features of your business; instead advertise the benefits your bring and your specialty at solving your niche’s biggest IT issues.

Address a Niche with Each Web Page

If you are targeting three niches with your IT marketing campaign, you should have a separate Web page for each. The page should talk about industry-specific issues and the solutions you provide.

What are your niche’s hot buttons? Which software packages will move people to understand your competency? If you know the specific benefits you need to present to be compelling, you will know how to best create your IT marketing campaign and your Web site.

Emphasize Service with IT Marketing and Your Web Site

Your Web site traffic will come from one of two places: demand you’ve generated somewhere else; competitors looking for information. With this in mind, prospects should be clear that when they get to your Web site, you are emphasizing services and the problems they solve for small businesses.

Use case studies and your Web site as integral parts of your IT marketing activities and introduce yourself as a true specialist.

Blogged By: Joshua Feinberg

IT Marketing: A Little Bit about Your Elevator Pitch

Your elevator pitch is an important part of your IT marketing assets. Basically, the elevator pitch is a 10 – 20-second introduction to you and your company that you use whenever you encounter a prospect at an event.

What should go into your IT marketing elevator pitch? It should talk about what your company does, what makes you unique and why the prospect might want to consider working with you.

Your IT Marketing Elevator Pitch: A Definition

The concept of the elevator pitch comes from the following situation:

You get into an elevator with someone on the 20th floor of a building and have until you get to the ground floor to talk about you and your company. Your pitch should go quickly enough so that in this situation, the person you are talking to would also have time to give YOU an elevator pitch. It needs to be very reflexive and ready-to-go whenever appropriate.

You Need to Practice Your Elevator Pitch

You should write your IT marketing elevator pitch out on an index card that you keep in your pocket. You can look through it when you’re in traffic or before you’re going into IT sales calls. You need to be comfortable delivering it.

When you start to go out and get involved in expos and seminars or at Chamber events, you will probably be tired of using your elevator pitch. But you have to practice being enthusiastic about it every time you give it as part of your IT marketing activities.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

IT Marketing and Mail to Your Current Customers

Starting a fresh IT marketing campaign can start with a mailing to your current customers.

Mail to Those That Know You

When you engage in IT marketing efforts to your current customers, you already own the list. And the recipients of the mailing will already know, like and trust you, so you will have overcome one of the biggest IT marketing obstacles.

What’s Your Customer Pitch?

If you already feel good talking to small business owners about important technology aspects such as virus protection, firewalls, passwords, data backup and power protection, then you are well on your way to successful IT marketing of IT audits and data protection.

You can present a very discounted audit deal to sweeten your IT marketing efforts towards your customers. If it’s regularly $400, for example, offer it for $299 through a set date. You can also include little extras such as an entry-level battery backup unit or surge protector. Make sure it’s something of value.

IT Marketing Means Tracking Results

Make sure you analyze the responses you get from any IT marketing mailings. So, if you get five percent inquiries and half end up taking the audit, you can compare this to other lists and mailings (from non-customers and customers alike). Of course, you’ll usually have a more interested audience when you are mailing to your current customers than you will for any other IT marketing campaigns.

Customers Can Use What They Have

You should explore your current customer relationships to figure out how people you work with can more efficiently use what they already have. You will probably find that customers have things that have been purchased but never used. Or if these items are being used, they are not being used to their fullest.

Solidify Your Relationships through IT Marketing

IT marketing mailings to existing customers are a great chance to help you improve your relationships. You can show customers how to better use what they already own while getting more service revenue. You also increase loyalty and the strength of relationships that are vital to the future of your business.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Where Do You Find IT Marketing Prospect Lists?

When you finish your long IT marketing sales letter, how do you know where to send it?

IT Marketing Tool #1: Advertising Lists

When you are looking for IT marketing lists, there are many you can choose. For example, in the U.S., the most popular are Zap Data and InfoUSA and are good places to start. When you need to rent mailing lists not in the U.S., go to Accountable List Brokers in Australia, List Angels in the UK or InfoUSA Canada listings.

If you want to get even more lists, you might consider going to your local chambers and industry trade groups or even newspapers and business journals to get IT marketing lists.

IT Marketing Tool #2: Trade Groups

As you build your IT marketing client list, you may end up with two clients that are in the same field, such as dentistry. If you have experience installing LANs and setting up networks for dentists as a result, going to places where prospects just like your current clients are will be easy.

IT Marketing Tool #3: Where Do Your Clients Hang Out?

Look for trade groups that those within your chosen specialty/occupation/industry would go. Then you can go to their meetings and conferences and take out a table at expos. You can become active as a panelist on something technology-related or write an article for one of their industry publications.

Keep It Modest

You should keep your involvement in organizations modest as part of your IT marketing campaign. Don’t join more than two or three industry organizations at a time. Get involved and be reasonably active, but don’t let it get in the way of your job (ie., don’t join the Board of Directors or anything with too much responsibilities). But do go to the meetings and look for word-of-mouth referrals.

With IT marketing, you need to focus on finding potential customers. Build your prospect list by buying or renting advertising lists and going to industry events.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit