Building a Responsive List of Prospective Resume Clients

If you're doing Facebook ads or Google Adsense, you might be driving prospective resume clients to your website who aren't necessarily ready to buy yet. But you've already spent money to get them to your site ... it would be a shame to let them leave your site without capturing some information that will allow you to keep in touch with them in the future -- and provide value to them at the same time.

Creating a list of interested people gives you a base with which to begin building -- or to expand -- a successful resume writing business. These are people you can consistently contact and get a favorable response to your product offerings.

Steps to Building a Responsive List
So how do you get your website visitors to bite? You want to provide content about more than just writing a resume -- because your prospects might be at various stages of the job search process -- and you want to provide information that will be valuable to them no matter where they are in the job search cycle.

That is where you start. Give people what they want so that they will come back. Try the following steps:

* Create an easy to use opt-in page -- This is the page on your website where customers enter their email address and name. It could be for a free resume critique or an ebook. Be sure to have it stated clearly that by filling out the form they are allowing you to contact them with future offers and information. The worst thing you can do is to deceive customers and send them things without their permission.

A good example of this type of offer/opt-in is Marty Weitzman's Advanced Resumes of NY website.

You'll notice the opt-in box on the left side of the page, including privacy policy. (Very important!)

* Offer something that they want -- With the opt-in information, offer a special report, discount on first order, video link or something else that they might otherwise have to pay for on another site.

A great example of this is Louise Fletcher's 12-day resume ecourse, offered on the Blue Sky Resumes website. This is tremendous value to the client (but the content convinces many job seekers they don't have the skillset to do it themselves!)

* Keep your promises --  If you are offering a monthly newsletter with engaging content and discount offers, make sure that that newsletter comes each month to their inbox. Also, create compelling offers that they will want to use and tell others about.

Another example is Mary Jeanne Vincent's website. Not only does she have the opt-in list for her newsletter, but she also offers a free special report, "Recession-Proof Your Career."

She also sends out emails to folks who have opted into her list (like this one sent in August):

* Give links that work -- Test your links to pages before placing them in email text. Especially for links to your website. Customers may try once or twice to reach your page, but you won't get a third try if it doesnít work.

Do you want to build a responsive email list? Inspire trust, confidence and loyalty in your customers with the tips above.

Get More Prospects Into Your Pipeline

I'm taking the "Get Clients Now"™ program with Joan Friedlander and am really enjoying getting back to the basics of marketing by following the steps of the program. I first learned about C.J. Hayden's program in 2003 at the Career Masters Institute conference in Kansas City (now the Career Management Alliance) and always had an interest in applying the program to my business. I'm enrolled in it as part of my training to become a facilitator for C.J.'s "Get Hired Now!™" program.

One of the keys to the Get Clients Now program is filling your pipeline with prospects. I came across a neat little free 5-minute video, "List Building" with Stu McLaren, hosted by David Frey as part of his Small Business Marketing Best Practices video newsletter.

As David notes, "The money is in the list" -- whether an e-mail or snail mail list, having a defined way to contact prospective clients is vital to building your business. This should be an opt-in list, and the individuals should have given you specific permission to communicate with them. David even uses terminology familiar to those of you who know the Get Clients Now! system -- mentioned that these are people who already "like and trust" you ("CJ's system mentions the value of creating relationships for people to "know, like, and trust" you).

David and Stu share the three keys to building your list, and three ideas to help you generate traffic. I haven't tried them (YET!) but thought you'd enjoy hearing about them too.