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The future is here, right now.
Gone are the days of your prospect meeting you for the first time in your office to then only learn all about you.
These days social media and Google searches accelerate that consumer due diligence ten fold and if you’re not maximising those channels you blend into the beige background of being a commodity like everyone else trying to gain more share of wallet within your industry.
This space of nurturing is called a Platform. Like standing on an old soap box with a megaphone, your platform is the stage that you build to get your message out, and it requires a business approach to gain a sufficient ROI.
Here are 5 Tools to Help You Get Your Message Heard, that My Team Uses Every day!
LinkedIn – this is by far [still] the most underrated tool available to sales professionals today. LinkedIn allows us to zero-in with laser like focus on specific niche markets and connects with them in large numbers every week, and add a tremendous amount of value. Our Automated Client Acquisition System pulls hundreds of leads towards our clients every week for them to add value in creative ways.
Value is the key theme here. Having a platform doesn’t mean your screaming about your products, services, how many letters are behind your name or that your firm was built in 1909 . It’s about connecting with your audience and serving them by appealing to their needs, frustrations, desires, hopes and dreams from a content perspective.
Canva.com has saved us thousands of dollars in design costs for graphics, PDFs, flyers and blog images. Their sleek interface and easy to use drag and drop method of building graphics with overlays allow our brand and story to be shared easily and consistently.
You may be at a firm where the marketing is controlled, but your social media and blog posts still need images and having a resource to pull it all together for you with help you connect with your audience professionally.
Related: 7 Ways to Increase Your Referability by Being Helpful
DRIP Email Marketing is a Godsend, it picks up where CRMs fall short, and that is email campaigns, subscriber management and tracking. Even if compliance needs to approve your emails, your audience deserves a custom approach based on their interests and needs. We encourage our clients to do bulk compliance approvals and load these letters into DRIP, so they have a true behind the scenes digital strategy for dripping on their current customers and prospects.
One of the best platform tools is to have a book. Everyone has a book inside them, it’s just a question of creating the time and space to write it out. Createspace.com has published both of my books and more recently Lure Factor , which presents the 5 essential steps that accelerate trust and increase referability for any niche. Once formatted, your book can be on amazon.com in minutes giving you a heightened sense of credibility. Books are also easily shared, and clients will want to share your book with their friends!
The best extension of your brand and platform is empathy. Being there when people need you when they least expect you to be there is the golden touch . In an age of everything being so fast, and digitally impersonal Facebook does create the possibility of you knowing when life hits your clients square in the chin for both good and bad times.
Facebook is an excellent window into the souls of your clients. In real time you can know if someone is having a child, moving, passed away, getting married or even needing help. By “listening “ on Facebook we can gain a tremendous amount of intelligence so that we can be right there with them in their grief, celebration or frustration. That’s powerful. That’s how social media is meant to be used, to stay social, build trust and support your audience of connections and followers.
Having a platform is like running a business, it requires daily focus, branding, messaging and deliberate intention. Those that grasp the power of having a trusted platform increase their referability, accelerate sales and fuss less. So, what’s your game plan?