Many small to mid-size companies have become frustrated with their ability to generate new business.  This frustration usually stems from the following.

We are so busy that we just don’t have the time to commit to creating a marketing plan.

We are a small business and do not have a marketing professional on our staff so there is no one to do what we need.

We are not sure how to articulate our message in a way prospects will understand, and we don’t have a list of prospects to market to.

We tried one of the marketing services, but never used it with any consistency and just canceled the service.

Sound familiar?  Most small to mid-size businesses can relate to the above.  They realize they need to do a better job of building brand recognition and generating new leads, but they simply do not have the components in place to achieve this objective. To be honest, many of these businesses don’t even do a very good job of upselling additional products and or services to their current customer base and for the same reasons: no time, no plan and no one to create and distribute the offer.  So, what’s the answer?  Well recruiting and hiring a full-time professional marketing person is too costly for most small to mid-size firms. Those that fully understand and have experience in the digital marketing arena are more likely to join a larger firm with well-defined goals and additional staff to support their marketing objectives. This does not mean that smaller businesses cannot compete with larger firms for the same business; they can, but they must be very smart and committed to engaging the expertise they need to build consistent marketing campaigns that drive new business. Here is what I mean.

Building brand recognition and generating a consistent flow of new business opportunities requires a marketing mix that includes things like distribution of articles, customer testimonials and education white papers on social sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook as well as advertising on these sites and others like Google and Yahoo.  But maybe you just cannot afford to do all of this and that’s ok because there is one other marketing component that you can afford to do and that’s e-mail marketing campaigns. Among all the above, the most effective and biggest bang for the buck is e-mail marketing. In fact, industry experts claim the following.

• There are 4.26 billion e-mail users worldwide.
• 96% of people check e-mails every day.
• People spend up to 5 hours a day reading and responding to e-mail.
• 333.2 billion emails are exchanged every day.
• 50% of people check e-mails while on vacation
• 60% of customers make a purchase due to emails.

Best of all creating and distributing e-mail campaigns does not cost a ton of money.

Commence Corporation, manufacturer of Commence CRM, is helping small to mid-size businesses effectively compete with larger organizations. Commence is filling the gap for those companies that need professional marketing tools and expertise but cannot afford to recruit and hire them. Commence is an all-in-one service that is also addressing a problem that today’s businesses are struggling with. Here is what I am referring to.

Some companies provide a list of contacts, but nothing more. Some will provide you with marketing templates that you can modify to create your campaigns. Some offer distribution services whereby they will send the campaigns for you and report on the opens and unsubscribes. Commence does it all and even provides you with their CRM software to capture, track, manage and share information about new business opportunities and where they are in the sales process. Here is how it works.

Right out of the gate Commence will import 5,000+ targeted contacts/prospects directly into the CRM system.

Commence marketing professionals will work with you to fine tune your message and create a series of marketing templates each with a call to action.

The Commence CRM system will distribute the templates twice a month to the targeted contact list.

Commence will not only report the opens, click throughs, and unsubscribes but rank and score the leads based on their behavior. Two points for those who opened the mailer, and three points for those that want to take the next step. This is reported in the Commence CRM system, which is provided for free, or if you have a CRM system, we will import the results into yours.

Commence CRM’s lead generation service is also very affordable. In fact, the monthly fee will be less than you would pay for the list of 5,000 contacts alone.  If you are struggling to generate new business opportunities because you do not have a consistent marketing program in place and nobody knows who you are, call us.  We will review how our program works, what is unique about it and why Commence customers are generating and closing more business.