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When you sell an expensive or high priced service there are three marketing challenges you need to solve...
These are:
1: How do we get interested qualified prospects to contact our business?
2: How do we convert many of these people into happy paying clients?
3: How do we get a large amount of referral business from these clients.
In this week's marketing column I want to focus on a simple strategy to solve the first marketing challenge in selling an expensive service.
In other words:
How do we get a good number of interested qualified prospects to contact our business and make an enquiry about the high priced service we offer?
My favourite way of doing this is to use a 'special report.'
Think of a special report as being a 'how to' guide related to your high priced service.
In your special report you will answer the common questions a customer has about your service. Your special report will show your customer the steps involved in buying your service and also show them the common mistakes to avoid.
Your special report will often have insider secrets and special tips that a typical new customer will probably not know about.
So your special report is something that a potential new customer will find very helpful if they are thinking about investing in the type of high priced services that you offer.
Here are two examples to get you thinking...
Example 1: The home relocation business:
A few years ago I met a client who owned a very successful home relocation business. The service his firm offered involves physically moving an entire home from one location to another on the back of large trucks. This is an expensive service costing between $20,000 and $150,000 for each home relocated.
I explained the special report concept to my client and suggested he use it.
Over the next two weeks he wrote a short special report called '11 secrets to successfully relocating your home".
All he did was write down the major steps his company normally followed with every home relocation. With each step he would give a paragraph or two of helpful information and a relevant example or story.
We then collected a couple of dozen positive testimonials from delighted customers and my client was ready to use his special report.
The very first time my client advertised this special report he had 29 people order it. He then mailed it out to each person and followed up with a low key phone call.
Twelve years later the same special report is still being used by my client.
And last time I checked it had created over 8 million dollars of paid sales of his home relocation services.
The reason it's working so well is that it contains a ton of useful information for people who are thinking of physically relocating their home.
Here's a more recent example of a special report:
Example 2: The outdoor lighting company
I have a client called The Garden Lighting Company
They specialise in installing outdoor lighting and have been doing a great job for several decades.
I helped them to create a helpful special report called 'The Insiders' Guide to Outdoor Lighting-the five critical keys to using outdoor lighting to transform your gardens and outdoor areas into a magical wonderland. '
This guide can be ordered from my clients' website and is jammed full of useful ideas about installing outdoor lighting.
It covers key things like:
How to create amazing outdoor lighting effects by using the 'less is more' approach.
Six clever ways to get great value with all your outdoor lighting and why the 'quality scale' is so important to understand when choosing outdoor lighting.
10 useful keys to choosing the ideal outdoor lighting company that is the perfect fit for your own outdoor lighting project.
And much more
The key to this new guide is that it contains a ton of valuable information for any person who is thinking about installing outdoor lighting on their property.
And should work well to attract ideal qualified prospects for them to talk to.
If you sell an expensive service look at how you can create a special report that ideal prospects would be keen to order from you.
It's a proven way to generate a good number of enquiries on an ongoing basis.
Look through your customer's eyes. Are you the solution provider or part of the problem?
Marlene Blaszczyk
Action Exercise:
Take some time in the next month or two and create a special report that ideal clients for your high priced service would be keen to order. (If you would like some help on how to do this just contact me using the email link in this column.)
Charlene White talks to Tom Raynel about her event-management business, The Cartery.