Build up a contact list and grow your business.
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Well, said! Always be armed with a stack of business cards, a notebook and a pen that works. The hardest part I find is asking people for their contact details and not sounding like I’m after the hard sell.
Next question, how do you actually get people to fill in their details on the website, plenty people look, lots love the work/product, but clinching their details is a different matter. Is this something people are getting wary about? Are people worried about having their details stored electronically after all the very public slip-ups of recent months?
Ha! Now that’s the trick! How to get people to sign up?
I think that you have to word it so that signing up to your database is going to be beneficial to them. There has to be something in it that they want. People don’t sign up for fun, they sign up if they are really interested in what you have to offer. Try and think of it as being more a case of ‘If you sign up look what you (could) get out of it’ rather than ‘Please sign up so I can take your money’!
It’s so important to build up these contacts that we’re considering putting together a competition. I’m still thinking about the details at the moment, but I reckon that a ‘Sign up here and win a custom coded content managed website’ competition may do the trick. It’s targeted, there is a benefit for the subscriber, and I get a database of potential customers who all want websites. And if they don’t win the competition then everyone who enters gets 20% off should they choose to ask us to build one for them.
In your case how about a similar theme? ‘Sign up here to win an original painting worth £1000 – and 20% off any purchase if you sign up and don’t win’. Remember that your customers can always buy again from you, so it’s probably worth taking the hit.