Cagora is a new social networking revolution based around Web 2.0 and sooner or later there will be thousands of businesses joining this site in order to promote themselves. The most obvious reason will be that it costs them nothing to do so which is consistent with other social networking sites. The difference with Cagora however is that it provides the ability to have a business profile, upload photos, upload articles, upload videos and soon to come will be audio as well.
Because Cagora is divided up into Local Worlds, such as the area you live, and Worlds of Interest, such as music and business opportunities, Cagora will provide enormous power for users to drill down to local and specific interests for search purposes. This is something that Google cannot offer.
That is just an introduction to Cagora as a site, but what I really want to talk about here is marketing on Cagora and how to go about it.
Cagora, like most Web 2.0 sites, attracts users who are not very receptive to the advertising flog. Those days are over, gone and finished. If you want to build your business online, then you need to look at the power that only relationship marketing can offer.
Articles are a great way of marketing, there's no question about that, but you must provide quality content and not a sales pitch. Internet users are looking for information. If they want advertising pages they can generally find plenty in the letterbox every day.
So what do I mean by relationship marketing?
Relationship marketing is simply building relationships with prospective customers and clients through the provision of quality information and content. Writing articles that surround the thrust of your business establish you as an expert in your field. Writing ten or so such articles that can be easily found with you as the author provides you with such a profile and prospective clients develop respect for your knowledge and expertise. Then when they do want to buy, who do you think they are going to call? Are they going to call you, a person they have come to "know" as an expert in the field they are seeking, or are they going to ring the biggest ad in the Yellow Pages? I certainly know who I would be calling.
My business is web design. I could write an article on "How To Select A Quality Web Designer", or perhaps "Why World Wide Web Consortium Validation Is So Important". Quite frankly I could think of a myriad of articles I could write establishing my expertise, but they still don't tell people how to do it themselves. As a mate of mine put it yesterday, "It doesn't hurt to give people the ingredients, just don't give them the recipe". Effectively, the more ingredients you can write about and promote, the more you establish your reputation.
So, to summarize, forget the old ways of trying to shove your product down people's throats. Use articles and content to build your reputation as an expert in your field and you will establish lasting relationships and long term customers.
With that said, it is still important for your business to develop potential contacts that will indeed become customers. It is common knowledge that every person who signs up to receive your company newsletter or information won't necessarily become a customer. But, it is important to be able to take the leads for potential customers that you acquire, and turn them into sales - people who will be responsive and receptive to your relationship marketing platform.
This is where lead scoring, or determining the potential customer value of your prospects comes in. By defining terms that measure the value of your leads and potential customers, you can get on track to be sure not to let the hottest leads sit on your back burner. A formalized process for lead scoring will help alleviate confusion over what constitutes a qualified lead. This is something that needs to come out of close communication between the marketing and sales departments, but in small businesses, these departments are often one in the same, sometimes with the same people doing marketing and sales.
What is Lead Scoring?
Lead scoring is a method for assigning point values to different categories of criteria that help target your marketing priorities. A successful lead scoring model will allow you to prioritize and rank your prospects and leads, and help determine the likelihood of each becoming a customer. Not all leads are equal - if you are able to devise a system tally and determine what prospects are most likely to become customers, this will help you streamline your remaining marketing efforts and ultimately attract more clients to your company.
Scores are determined by adding up the points for each criterion selected to use, and these will often differ from business to business, and be determined by the type of company that you have.
A lead scoring model for an office supply distributor will likely look different from that of a shoe store or business that sells beauty products. Once you have scored your lead, it will either be passed along to sales for development as a contact, or left with marketing for continued nurturing as a potential customer. All leads should not be treated uniformly, and by determining where your prospect may be in their buying cycle by using a lead-scoring model, you'll be closer to understanding your clients.
It is true that you may not be able to determine who will become a reliable customer 100% of the time, even with an effective lead scoring model. It is a good idea to follow up all of your potential leads - even ones that don't seem to be "hot" may turn out to be. But, in most companies, it is not possible, or cost effective to pursue every lead, and this is why implementing a lead scoring model can be an effective extension of your relationship marketing platform.
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