This weekend, I received a nice marketing piece from Deloitte bundled with my copy of CFO magazine. It was a booklet titled Breathing Lessons (How CFOs can thrive under pressure). This book does a very nice job of identifying their ideal customer – Chief Financial Officers. It also defines their customers need or pain – those struggling with ever-increasing responsibilities and a pressure cooker environment. The booklet does a nice job of outlining things that a CFO should do, the implication being that Deloitte can help you implement these ideas.
This booklet is a good example of the type of “free report” that we encourage small business owners to offer on their website as part of a two-step or permission based marketing effort. By offering this booklet in exchange for some (limited) contact information, you allow people with this particular need to identify themselves. This gives you a very targeted group to begin engaging in a conversation regarding how you can help them solve their problems.
Deloitte probably has a list of the CFOs they want to do business with and I’m sure they have a big marketing budget, so maybe that’s why they don’t ask you to “pay” for the report with your contact information.
As a small business owner, you can use the two-step approach to market to a very targeted audience without having to spend a fortune.
