Essentially, sell-sumers literally sell what they consume in return for money. In the name of consumer participation, be it selling their opinions to corporate surveys, paddling their views to fellow consumers, sell-sumers are fast becoming a commendable marketing force employed by far sighted early adopters. This is one of the best approach for product makers solicit feedback especially during product testing stage, but this is not to say that existing products do not benefit from it. They do, in the same way that new test products do. This is probably one of the low cost forms of generating product reviews and response from the product owners’ point of view. They are going into the marketplace to generate opinions of real users from first hand accounts – indeed, the most authentic product comments a product maker can ever have.

Consumers no longer simply consume, but literally participate and contribute to the marketing and product improvement process. Consumers are quietly riding the tide of this evolving trend of endless novel ways to make money from selling personal assets, opinions, creations etc. This new trend is here for good due to the fact that Sell-sumers are fast perceived to be a growing and critical link in the entire product creation and enhancement process.

Sell-sumers will give their opinion on new and existing products in the market and the most effective way to generate constructive feedback on the products is to accord them the greatest freedom to opine on the features, benefits and drawbacks. Product makers should then incorporate the constructive feedback into their product improvement process.

Consumers have been subconsciously trained to become experts in their products they consume in terms of their needs, wants and desires. In fact, they are also well tuned in topic of business, marketing as well as advertising. It hence follows that these sell-sumers can then proceed to give their opinions to any business owners who might even trade business tips and product feedback for money.

Being able to get extra cash is always a great proposition, especially when it is nothing more than simply expressing your consumer perspectives. Indeed, an interestingly twist to the traditional small business marketing strategies that we have been executing.

After all the hard work you have put into road-mapping your marketing plan, now is the time to implement and test the authenticity of your marketing skills.

So, you launch your marketing campaign as planned. You start to get responses from various marketing tactics or tools. These are essentially responses or leads, which eventually if you do the right things, are converted into sales. Every single touch point or contact that you receive is a potential sale.

Obviously as you read this, you would realize the importance of leads and more significantly, leads management. Hence, learning how to manage leads is critical to your marketing activities.

Many entrepreneurs make the common mistakes of running incessant marketing campaigns but do not have the resources to follow up with their responses or leads. Eventually, the leads become “cold” and useless after a period of time. Experience has it that newly generated responses or leads must be attended to within a month from the point they are generated. Efficient marketers attend to the leads the moment they are generated, so as to keep the touch point warm. If first attempt to convert fails, they revisit the lead may within one month or a given time period, based on the type of business they are in.

Another major myth is that there is no way to track ad responses or leads. Many marketers are hesitant to advertise in TV, radio, newspapers and magazines by the sheer myth that such advertisements cannot be effectively tracked for response. In truth, it can be achieved very easily using simple routing approaches effectively for leads and sales tracking.

The Illustration for lead tracking system below:

You have a need to run marketing campaigns and advertise the business in order generate more leads with the objective of converting them into sales. Advertising channels broadly encompass television commercials (TVCs), press advertisements, email & website marketing & marketing collaterals. You will need to train one telemarketer (depending on scale) to run this process.

Tracking Your Traditional Advertising Channels – TVCs, Press Advertisements, Writeups as well as Marketing Collaterals

What you need to do:

• Design Ad copies and emails with Hotline (Loop-Back) feature & website address prominently placed.
• Prepare a Lead Tracking Schedule which will be tabulated at the end of each day.
• Prepare a telemarketing script to lead generate effectively

Managing the Process

• Ensure that the Hotline and email responses are attended to immediately.
• At inception, the telemarketer will check the source of ad channel, ie. From where did the caller find out about the campaign.
• Your email campaign system must be able to track how many of your emails are opened or read.
• It should also track how many email readers visit your website via the links in your email. (this could be tracked from your website) At best, allow half a day turn around time. The longer you wait on the lead, the colder the lead gets. Route the lead to sales person.
• Sales person to revert on status of leads after attending the lead via email or call update. If your email system has the capabilities, configure the consolidated reports will be routed to your system on a daily basis

Tracking Your Website

• Capture your prospects’ details by installing an auto-responder.
• Ensure that there is a response or “shy yes” page which allows your website visitors to leave their details or enquiries.
• Use analytics tracking systems to track your website traffic flow.
• If you have installed Google Adsense or affiliate marketing on your website, analyze your leads and sales analytics from respective programs.
• Analyze from comprehensive analytic reports where & who your visitors are as well as whether they are repeat visitors. You can also track the backlinks from where your traffic is generated. This will help you to further hone your channel marketing tactics.

The above lead tracking model works well for traditional & internet marketing mix, from advertising to sponsorship, to event management and of course the ever-green marketing campaigns.

To reiterate, Leads are the essence of your Small Business Marketing Strategy, hence, you need to grow the process over time and track accordingly.

For more information, check out Small Business Marketing Strategie here.