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Your Consultant Website
Whether you are operating as a full
time independent commercial finance consultant (CFC) or simply
part time and referring business to factors and lenders on an
occasional basis, your business website is one of the truly
critical components of you overall marketing mix.
Your site should be designed to be a
"virtual billboard" of information that is available to recipients
of your direct mail, classified ads, e-mail marketing, cold
calling, and other marketing media. It is where they go to
"find out more" about your business finance services. Most
importantly, it is where interest business owners can request your
"offer" of a FREE booklet, white paper, report,
newsletter, etc.
Do not get too involved in site rankings and submissions to search
engines and directories. For your business, rankings are
highly overrated. If someone is searching the internet for
factors and lenders regarding financing, they will find many sites
in addition to yours and will submit their deal dozens of times in
dozens of places resulting in heavy competition. You will
likely be contacted periodically by companies that (for a fee)
will promise to improve your site's ranking. This is always a
waste of your money and time.
Your Website's Domain
Your domain is the internet address where your
website is located. It will begin with "www" and preferably
end in ".com". If you are part of the BIZCAP or Broker4Us
programs, you domain is a leased domain and owned by DataMax or
Aegis Factors. If you are independent, you will own your
domain and should purchase it through DataMax.
Your domain
should either relate to your business name or should give a
snapshot of what your business does. A company, for example,
with a name of Jones Growth Capital might have a domain of
something like
www.jonesgrowthcap.com. Generally, the shorter the
domain, the better. People tend to make one mistake for
every seven keyboard strokes.
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Calls to Action,
Offers, Newsletters, and Your Website
Offers, which we address in
more detail in subsequent modules, are a critical part of all direct
marketing strategies. In fact without an "offer", direct
marketing simply becomes advertising. All factoring broker
sites provided by DMS and IACFB include a built in "offer" of a booklet
entitled "When Banks Say NO!...The Small Business Guide to
Factoring" or similar. The
booklet is provided in PDF format and its "offer" provides a method of collecting names of
prospects and business owners interested in financing and
seeking more information on your services.
It is essential that your website always incorporate an offer.
In the world of marketing for factoring clients, it is all about
"lead generation". And, as far as leads go, email addresses
are golden. Your website is the mechanism by which you
"gather" email addresses or "leads". The primary method for
gathering such leads is through the use of the word FREE
accompanied by an offer.
FREE is marketing's magic word and a call to action
and this is especially true of marketing on the internet. It
is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing quiver.
For effective lead generation, you must offer FREE
additionally information in the form of a white paper, report,
booklet, newsletter, etc. To request the FREE offer, the
prospect must request it via a form on your site. Upon
receipt of the form (and capturing the email address of the
prospect), you then supply the FREE material.
Newsletters are an impressively powerful tool for gathering
leads and another "must" for those serious about the business of
commercial finance brokering. The primary method of handling
requests for your newsletter is again, your broker website.
While you may not be a newsletter writer when you first begin your
career as a broker, your should plan on producing your first
newsletters as soon as possible. When ready request the
addition of a form specifically designed to capture the email
addresses of those requesting your newsletter.
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