Building a Consistent Business Service Funnel

Many service business owners work in cycles, focusing on a single client or a small group of clients for a period of time, then frantically marketing again to get a new round of work. More than 50% of service business owners work within this feast or famine cycle. The problem with this approach is that:

It means that the business income fluctuates
It adds unnecessary mental stress
Prospective clients often detect the desperation and resist hiring them.

A better approach is to balance your current client load with marketing efforts that drip feed messages over a period of time. This requires a systematic approach to marketing that is conducted offline, online and through direct marketing. An effective online drip marketing campaign to maintain a more even service pipeline might include:

Prospecting - Giveaway: Traffic generation techniques provide a way to keep new prospects entering your marketing funnel. By using a tactic often called the "ethical bribe", you give your traffic something for free in return for their contact details. This giveaway should be something of value to your target market – a solution to a pressing problem in the form of an ebook, special report, e-course, audio recording, video, or combination of these.
Maintain Contact - Newsletter: Once you have contact with your prospect you need to build a relationship with them. A good way of doing this is through a newsletter. This may be hard copy or Ezine distributed by email. The main goal is to stay in touch and establish an ongoing link with the prospect. Send out at least one newsletter a month, two if you have enough time.
Offer a Way to Interact – Blog: blogs are an invaluable way to interact with your prospects and existing and past clients. Not only do they build trust in your expertise but you get to learn more about them and their problems. This leads to new ways in which you can help them and create more income. Encourage your blog readers to subscribe to your blog RSS feed. Post 2-3 times per week.
Build Your Expert Status - Article Marketing: To generate traffic to your site or to your blog, write and publish high quality articles that demonstrate your expertise. Place these articles on your website and blog, and distribute them through article directories. These directories are surfed by Ezine publishers, reporters, print media editors, and bloggers in search of quality content to present to their readers.
Help Others to Help You - Social Networking: Social networking is an essential part of your profile building toolkit. At the very least have profiles Facebook and Twitter,and at least 2 lenses on Squidoo. For a more direct sales network try eCademy. This is a pure business network that actively generates contacts through clubs, forums, webinars, physical get togethers etc.
Min seminars / Speeches / Teleclasses / Webinars: Offer to speak to local groups that comprise your target market. Ask if you can offer back of room items for sale – books, seminars, work kits etc. This may range from a 10 minute after dinner speech to a 1 1/2 hour mini-seminar. These are very effective in building your list and increase the number of prospective clients. Design a signature speech or teleseminar that demonstrates your knowledge and expertise without giving away the ‘secrets’ you plan to sell. You can achieve this by focusing on the what and the why but not the how. This ‘taster’ compels your listeners to visit your website and sign-up to get your giveaway. They you have them on your list.
Videos / Powerpoint: Create short video snippets of your seminars to upload to YouTube. You can also add your powerpoint presentation on media sharing sites such as Scribd.com or slideshare.net.

Don’t try to implement all of these devices at once. Work with one for three months, then add the next. Little by little, each drip forms a stream, and each stream grows to a river. This is the best way to leverage your time and cover a wider geographic region than one on one marketing efforts.

And remember - use Google Analytics and other tracking to monitor your success as much as possible at each step of the conversion process.