[Zach]

My company is currently seeking new avenues of marketing. Our ROI on SEO is not what we'd anticipated, and cold-calling is not working as well as we'd like.

We are willing to spend money, but we aren't sure which avenue will produce the highest yield.

Here's what we've been investigating:

1. SEO Marketing
2. Email blasts
3. Drip marketing
4. Mojodialer/Cold Calling
5. Direct Mail
6. Voice Broadcasting
7. "Turn & Burn" landing pages/websites

Does anyone have any thoughts on these?

[AndyYSCISOdept]

I can guarantee you that whatever you do, the most bang for your buck comes from having a marketing guy work from your office so he or she has a company identity but also so you can make sure they are working. And secondly you need to make sure the deals that you are getting are getting in the hands of people who can fund them. I can speak to you more about this. Considering our company funded 1200 deals last month I feel qualified.

[Franklin]

Just a quick and dirty breakdown...


1. SEO Marketing
Requires initial investment of time, some capital, and knowledge. The 'knowledge' part is the kicker as you
have to be able to stay abreast of Google's constant algorithm changes. Social media plays a part now in ranking and many previous strategies were wiped out/are being wiped out. Once you get top rankings, the next battle is staying there, which means a consistent steady outpouring of capital and work, writing content for search engines, writing content for users, and writing content for one more factor....



2. Email blasts
You need to blanket a large volume of businesses with your message, repeatedly, or
target small volumes in a specific industry with a targeted message. Don't blast to too many bad email addresses or your you'll have too high a bounce rate and risk your server, links, domain, IP address, getting blacklisted. Specialization is key.



3. Drip marketing
Works well when you have a group of email addresses that you know their interests and you cater your message to their interest first, then your pitch. If you do it with addresses with no previous relationship, your spam score will increase as they label you and your messages will stop being delivered.


4. Mojodialer/Cold Calling
Tried and true method which most funders say gives the most consistent rate of return. Usually it's compared to unsuccessful marketing campaigns however, so results or generally skewed, but favored because it's more predictable. Requires a lot of labor and good data to call. You will get deals, but you'll generally have a revolving door of workers until you get some superstars (and even they get burn out sometimes).
Works best using inexpensive openers who truly enjoy being on the phone.


5. Direct Mail
Takes a longer time to see results, as you can get calls 2 months after a campaign is done, and works best when run a number of consecutive mailings after each other. Can be scary because it can be costly, and without large consistent outlays of mailing blasts, results can be very hit or miss. You will get calls but they may all be desperate time wasters. Does yield a good rate of return over time.


6. Voice Broadcasting
Difficult to do and can be expensive. In theory it's great because you're getting an owner on the phone right now who indicated they want money, so that's candy to a great salesperson, but there are critical flaws that usually result in a lack of success. Market saturation creating indifferent to irate merchants, lots of "take me off the list", and "not interested" requests, knapsack, jelly bean, or bedroom start ups, and merchants that only respond because they have 30 inquiries last month and you are their last dying hope. Also, many successful merchants won't do business off a cold call, and a lot are never even present at the business. IVR's help with getting more interested qualified owners, but their sales volumes are still generally small.
* This is my favorite type of marketing because when done correctly, does lead to hot, qualified, and hard to reach merchants over the phone, with an excellent CPL.



7. "Turn & Burn" landing pages/websites
Can be an inexpensive method of generating leads if you can get the site up quickly and inexpensively. Expect over 60% and close to 80% of leads to be startups. You do need to know how to make pages convert visitors and compel them to opt-in. You can utilize lots of inexpensive tools to drive traffic facebook, linkedin and other social media. Usually takes time and energy to build up before you see any results, and you need to target less competitive keywords and traffic streams. You can move faster by using PPC, but that can be an expensive war of attrition (that Google wants to see) if you don't know what you're doing. Even if you do know, there's a lot of competition, driving up the prices.


















www.UCCRadar.com

[Franklin]

I also agree with Andy that having an in-house marketing guy who know's his/her stuff is ideal, although it doesn't really matter if they're in the office every day or remote sometimes; you'll know if they're working by the results they're generating for the office.

[cashguy]

So you favorite is 6.?

[Sean Cash]

Prosper, which did more than $100 million in personal loans last month alone, acquired the lion's share of their customers through direct mail. They are masters of it.

[Zach]

Franklin, your post was great. Appreciate it.

[MCNetwork]

I've done all of those approaches and finally settled on #4. Yes there is a revolving door of sales people but this approach gives me the best bang for my buck BY FAR.

[Franklin]

Prosper, which did more than $100 million in personal loans last month alone, acquired the lion's share of their customers through direct mail. They are masters of it.

Direct mail is excellent for Prosper's industry because they're dealing with every day consumers where anyone/everyone can be a customer.

Marketing products to regular every day joes is such a pain when learning to do correctly. In one sense it's great because it's a huge market, everyone's a potential client, but logistically it's a nightmare to efficiently filter out the candidates with an interest who match their criteria. And then when you add gov't regulations, forget it.

Email blasts to consumers about loans will quickly get you spam labeled; business owners will at least look at a letter that might be helpful to their bottom line. 99.999% of average regular people see no purpose in looking at a message that's not entertaining, even if it may be relevant in some way, so even with multiple servers, flipping IP's and content spinning, expect a ridiculously low response. Ditto for cold calling.

Don't even think of voice broadcasting consumers, I've seen real estate companies doing 10 million a month get shut down in 24hrs for that. (There is a way voice broadcast consumers without being a non-profit, without creating trouble however, but on a small scale). Turn and Burn sites can work if you have a unique offering and you use it more to build a list that you can drip-market to later.

Direct mail is ideal because the letter/postcard can be laying around for months, and there's a good chance at one point someone will see it, (maybe not even the intended recipient) and call. Again direct mail works very well when done consistently over time.

[Finance1]

I'm sure prosper was using pre-screened credit data as well. Everyone they mailed to fit the credit box they were looking for. We don't have that luxury in this industry.

[Franklin]

So you favorite is 6.?

Yes because you can see results within 15 - 20 minutes after launching, you can generate more volume than 5 top ranking websites combined, (scaleable growth), you can turn it on and off at will, the cost is lower than any other outbound marketing method except Email (but requires less tech skills once up), and you can get very high quality owners (when done the right way).


Also, you can take a random laptop and any wifi connection (McDonalds, Starbucks, Bryant Park Bench, Grandma's basement, etc.) and 150 bucks, and there is a tool that exists now that will locate, in real time, qualified business owners that are looking for funding ($20,000 min. in mthly sales, up to 3 mil usually). These aren't website opt-ins either, (which then go and fill out 5 more online forms). And development technically isn't even finished yet.















-
www.UCCRadar.com

[bizloanbroker]

Is it me or is every single thread on here lately someone selling leads or one form or another?

[admin]

Is it me or is every single thread on here lately someone selling leads or one form or another?

A spammer kept bumping all these old lead threads to the top. They've been banned.

[isaacdstern]

maybe a separate section for marketing?

[Rob Buchanan]

maybe a separate section for marketing?

http://dailyfunder.com/forumdisplay.php/15-Promotions

[Rob Buchanan]

Is it me or is every single thread on here lately someone selling leads or one form or another?

I sell leads