Hello ladies, gents, cartoon animals, and others.
WiFi money-related article for today. Not only WiFi money. But something you could use to your advantage if you are doing any sort of outreach toward the local business.
Dealing with local businesses? You know it can be quite painful.
Especially when you want to directly get in touch with decision-makers. Usually cold calling is the only option. Which also means you will have to deal with “heavy” gatekeepers. LinkedIn profiles are nonexistent (in most cases) and cold emails are not optimal.
Why?
Because you have business owners who are not checking their emails. Saw quite few different situations over the years. Wish this was a joke. But it’s not. We have seen a lot of different things over the years.
What you are left with when it comes to outreach? Not much.
But there is one more outreach channel you could try.
Letters And Local Businesses
So what’s left to cover since we concluded local businesses are different and hard to reach? Something that is not being mentioned around enough.
Letters.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Yes, we do mean writing letters and sending them to business owners.
Think about it in terms of the cold emails. The same principles will apply. But instead of cold emails, you will be sending handwritten letters. Since we outline the main idea. Let’s get to the pros and cons.
Why would you do this type of outreach?
an effective way to bypass gatekeepers
easy to personalize
makes you look genuine
cost-effective
The downside of a method like this one?
Doesn’t work for every type of local business. It will depend on testing the waters and how things are working. Mostly based on geographical location and the industry in which you operate.
As with most money-making activities, there is no guarantee. We have seen very similar offers in two different geographical locations. One of them was completely destroying and brought amazing results. Other one? Not so much.
Conclusion of letters as an outreach?
Heavily geographically dependent.
Looking for another unique angle?
How To Do It
We already mentioned and compared letters with cold email campaigns. Those who are sending them should already have a clear understanding of what we are discussing.
To put things into perspective:
Buy envelopes
Locate or scrap the local leads
Write handwritten personalized letters
Send them out strategically
Test out waters
Profit
Handwritten?
Correct. We are trying to make your outreach look as genuine as possible. Bad handwriting? Can’t help. You will have to find someone else to do it for you.
What do we mean by sending them out strategically?
We don’t recommend sending letters to every business in the same area. Local business owners do communicate with each other. Especially if they're in the same industry.
What do you think will happen if they start discussing the “personalized” letters they have received from you? Realization moment. Your letters are not actually personalized and they are a part of your mass outreach strategy. Results?
Your letter went straight to the bin. Better to play it smart and take it slow.
Our recommendation is to separate businesses into “parts of the town” or if you want to be even more specific - divide them into neighborhoods. You will end up being on the safer side since you will be able to pinpoint exactly how many letters you sent to “Dentists that are located in SoHo”.
Another great aspect when we are talking about letters is how easy is to segment them and use the “similar” approach to a targeted list. Following our advice to take it slow and smart should give you plenty of space to use “similar” wording and text. The only thing you'll be changing is who you're sending the emails to.
Want to spice things up?
Same concept as with cold emails and personalization. Offer is good enough and relevant? Don’t worry too much about personalization - not saying to leave it out completely. But don’t kill yourself with the research on the details and waste your time on low ROI activities. They don’t care.
Last on the list worth mentioning is “lead quality”. If you already did the local business outreach you know is quite tricky to obtain good quality info.
What is great about letter outreach is you will need the addresses. Which you can scrap from Google Maps. In 80% of the cases, that will be more than enough.
Looking for a way to get leads?
Conclusion
You should already know there is no magic out there. Another outreach method that will either work (or won’t) depending on the market, industry, and several other factors.
The good thing about it? It’s cost effective and there is a chance it will allow you to bypass the gatekeepers easily. Something that is not always the most straightforward when dealing with local businesses.
As always do what you want with this info. But if you are dealing with local business owners there are zero reasons to give a method like this one a try. Mom and pop shops are suckers when it comes to making them feel special and unique. Exactly what you will be doing in this modern day and age of the internet.
Worst that can happen?
You will realize it’s not optimal for your offer, lose some pocket change you spent on envelopes, and move on.
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