Questions

I'm from Chile, and Inbound marketing is really new over here. I have been doing it for years for my previous startup with excellent results, and made some projects to bigger companies and now I want to create an agency to do this full time. This would be in spanish and I have freelance copywriters in my team. thank you!

I also own a remote marketing agency with inbound marketing component. I'm responsible for most of the business development, so I think I know enough to give suggestions (to reduce the amount of deadends that you have to face).

Given your market is not overcrowded, your social proof at previous startup with excellent results, you have experienced copywriters in your team, and managed projects for bigger companies, I don't think you need more social proof from free work locally to succeed. (only offer it to one or two if this is indeed a problem, and your previous successes are disregarded by your market, but this rarely happens unless you haven't proved your expertise enough in solving their problems)

Here's the order of business development tactics I would use in your situation:

1a) Direct mail outreach - I assume Chile has a postal service, right? If so, this can cut through a lot of noise (digital marketing, cold-calls, print advertising) while getting their dedicated attention if done properly. I would study campaigns like this ( http://www.getvyral.com/2010/07/dan-kennedy-3-letter-sequence-magnetic.html ) to get your prospects' attention. That said, you gotta have the right message, prospect list, and distribution channel.

1b) Cold-canvassing / cold-calling - This is an alternative to 1b, especially for less sophisticated markets. If your market is not crowded, you won't be in danger of appearing desperate pitching your services this way. As soon as more players enter the market, if you're perceived as desperate, it will be harder to get the sale. Even if you get the sale, your profit margin will likely be eaten away.

2) Strategic alliances - If you're starting out, you likely won't have a ton of capital available to buy advertising and send direct mail. You can work together perhaps with TV, radio, and print advertising people to make marketing campaigns work together between all the different channels. The possibilities of partners are endless. This is done by Fortune 500 companies all the time.

3) Online advertising networks - If you have some cash to spend, I would suggest building the assets in this order (social media advertising network, retargeting display advertising network, search engine marketing). The former would be more economical right now to test your funnel and offers, and you would want them tweaked properly before attempting to make SEM pay. Keep in mind, even though people searching for marketing help on search engines have urgency, they may be struggling financially (to the point of unable to hire you!).

Remember, if you have a good number of retainer clients on your books, and you price properly, it wold solve a lot of problems you will face later.

That's all I can think of. If you'd like me to clarify any of my feedback for your situation, we can book a call and walk you through the process.


Answered 9 years ago

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