One of the most important parts of marketing our small business is finding inexpensive ways to stand out from the competition.

If we can stand out to capture leads while also following up consistently to educate them over time, we start to really see quick and sustainable growth.

Today, I want to walk you through one of the simplest but most impactful changes we implemented in our business to help us capture more leads and follow up with them consistently.

The major game changer for us was when we made two changes.

First, we starting using a digital business card to replace paper cards.

But, we didn't just replace our paper business cards with an “NFC Business Card”...we started using their hidden features to do something really powerful....

We used them to collect the email addresses and cell phone numbers of our connections, and then we consistently followed up with them to educate them about our services, what we're all about, how we could help them, and the new things we had going on in our business.

But consistency at scale is difficult -- so we made sure the follow up was automatic (and across multiple channels). 

Let's dive into the features that make a digital business card, "smart"...

Overall, NFC business cards represent a modern approach to networking. Not only can the other person save your details to their phone, but they can also share their information back with you.

In testing across several businesses, we noticed that NFC cards led to around a 70% increase in “actual engagement” and action. 

The novelty of these got our foot-in-the-door, but the real power was in the hidden features that enabled us to funnel contacts into our sales engine to do all the heavy lifting of following up until they were ready to consider working with us.

This meant that many of the people that interacted with our NFC cards, actually became clients and long term contacts in our network over a 12 month period, simply because we consistently followed up with them after capturing their information.

These are some of the reasons to implement a 'smart' business card

coupled with an automated sales and nurture engine:

Reason #1: Database Capture

Modern smart cards offer integrations to text, email, and customer relationship management systems. This saves you time by reducing manual data entry and ensures consistent list building. 

Reason #2: Automatic Follow up 

Successful business consultants don't stop at a single follow up. They are consistent about following up over time to offer value and educate their audience on the benefits of working with them.

Reason #3: Multi-Channel Reach

Almost everyone uses email and has a text-enabled mobile phone, so using both of these channels increases reach of each message. 

Reason #4: High Open Rates

Text messages are typically read within minutes of receipt, making them ideal for starting an active back and forth conversations. Emails also have high open rates, especially when personalized.

Reason #5: Increased Engagement

Regular communication through text and email channels keeps your brand top-of-mind for potential, current, and former clients. This can increase your chances of being thought of when a need arises.

Reason #6: Cost-Effective

Compared to traditional marketing channels like print or Google ads, text and email marketing are relatively low-cost and yield a high return on investment.

Reason #7: Automation and Efficiency

Many aspects of email and text marketing can be automated, saving time and ensuring timely communication. And in this article, it's all about creating an automatic follow up process trigged by our business card interactions.

Reason #8: Pipeline Creation

You never want to start from ground zero finding your next client. You'll always want too be building a pipeline of leads that our automated system will nourish until they are are ready to become a client.

While it takes some work and creativity, the results are more than worth it.

Here are the core steps:

Step #1:
Find a tool that allows you to send out mass broadcasts and triggered automations when a lead is pushed into the system. There are all in one tools that allow you to do both email and text marketing. 

Step #2:
Using API Keys, configure your integration to your chosen follow up system. This is what makes the magic work with the hidden features of any digital business card that make it 'smart'.

This is the Lead Capture Form on my personal digital business card.

Every time someone fills it out, they are automatically sent to the all in one system I use to send out emails and text messages.

It only shows up when someone saves my contact information to my phone so I've made it a habit to talk people through taking that action (and I also enable something similar on my website...in step 6).

Step #3:
Next, build one automated sequence that acts as a welcome sequence and alert reminder for key tasks in your follow up process.

In my personal sequence, I wait a day after I meet someone and send them a "great to connect with you" message.

Then I wait at least 2 days (and make sure it's a week day at a good time) to nudge a reminder to myself to personally follow up with them using a phone call, text or email. 

I could automate this 2nd automation instead of sending myself an alert reminder if all my leads were similar, but for me personally, there are too many variations in industry.

Some might get a personal lunch invite, while others may get dropped into a newsletter list or be offered something specific to their niche or problem.

For your situation, you may have a multi week welcome sequence before dropping all connections into your ongoing nurture newsletter list.

Step #4:
You're going to want to build yourself a "lead magnet". This is something to offer people for free. 

It's something you can package in a PDF, Video, or Spreadsheet that teaches something valuable and relevant to your audience. 

If you're targeting executive leadership, you want to give them something useful that they can use or learn from.

Maybe it's a 10-Step guide or checklist or curating 3rd party articles, books, and content on issues they care about.

Step #5:
To promote your offer, you'll need to build a lead capture landing page. This is where you'll send people to get your content from email, text, articles, guest posts, podcasts, or social media.

Optionally, you could also boost Facebook and LinkedIn ads around your offer as well, to target your ideal customer.

Step #6:
We also really like the "exit intent" opt-in offers like eCommerce brands use -- because they work to capture anonymous traffic into known visitors on your website. 

Step 1 captures the email. 

Step 2 optionally captures the cell phone number...because it's always easier to get the phone number after you get the email and that can enable a back and forth conversation where more qualifying questions could be asked.

Step #7:
Like with our 'smart' business card automation, we use another automation to make our landing pages and pop ups deliver our 'lead magnet' asset when someone fills out the forms.

This is our trigger that:

1) Sends the lead a text message with a link to the file

2) With another message to start a conversation

3) Sends an alert to us of the new lead to follow up on

BONUS:  There's another automation listening for anytime someone texts "calendar" to send them our booking link. 

With business texting facing increasingly tighter regulations, it's also important to use a business-class system to document opt-ins and enable "stop" to opt-out replies to be in compliance (versus sending manual texts from your phone).

While setting up your automated sales and alerts system is something that you can absolutely do on your own, I know that your time is valuable. This is a task we do for our customers all the time and my team and I would love the opportunity to just do it for you. 

It’s not expensive and once it's set up in 3-4 weeks from sign up, and you're sending people into your automated lead capture, follow up, and alerts system for 60-90 days, you'll be building a pipeline of future clients that will keep growing the longer you let it run.

Click Here to Book a Call Now and let us help build your business using the latest in marketing tech.