Are You Taking Advantage of ACH Payments?

A recent study from NACHA (the electronic payments association) revealed that, “49% of all recurring bills” are made through ACH structures.

The association indicated that the majority of these payments continue to be made in the consumer to business realm, with a slight increase in business to business usage.

The association was quite surprised to discover that although many large corporations have incorporated ACH payments for their customers, they still continue to pay their own vendors with paper checks.

Worse, small businesses are lagging behind in making ACH payments available to their own customers and to their vendors, with less than 28% taking advantage of this option.

According to Wesley Yuhn, who is recognized for his work in financial services and solutions, the main reason that small businesses fail to utilize ACH direct deposit for their payroll either because they believe they are too small or they believe that the cost doesn’t warrant the expense.

However, ACH is not just for payroll; the options that it creates for potential clients and customers to use alternative methods of payment makes up for the costs.

Are You Limiting Your Sales Potential?

There are plenty of articles about providing customers with a positive experience--- whether you have an online store, a brick-and-mortar store or a combination of both. Part of creating a good customer experience is making it as easy as possible to buy your products or services. 

 

Those businesses who limit the type of payment that they accept are also limiting their own sales potential.

It is extremely surprising that many businesses remain under the impression that only retail companies need to consider expanding their type of payments. 

Contrary to popular belief tool companies, lumber companies and wholesalers can also take advantage of selling online as well as accepting paper checks, eChecks, credit cards and checks by phone as well as establishing automatic invoicing and recurring payments for their clients. 

 

Using an ACH payment solution, paper checks can be verified, converted to electronic debits nearly instantly and deposited to your account in a matter of moments. Some companies are known to use a system called Check 21 that allows you to scan a paper check into the system. It also allows you access to funds on the same day.

Increasing Your Opportunities 

 

With the holidays just around the corner, any marketing specialist will be suggesting that you consider using mobile bill pay, electronic payments via email or mobile phone and click2call options for online orders. 

 

In order to accept payments via mobile phone, for example, in a click2call advertising strategy, it is important to use an ACH service to protect your customer’s information and make it easier to do business with you. 

 

One question that is repeatedly asked is how a company paying electronically can produce the necessary paperwork for their accountant and tax records. Regardless of the type of electronic payment a customer prefers to use, receipts are immediately sent with all the information needed to satisfy their CPAs and government offices. 

 

One of the top reasons to use ACH is because all transactions can be stored on a flash drive, in the Cloud or a virtual storage facility instead of one physical paper for the next ten years or more.

The Power of Inbound Marketing for Diabetic Medical Supply Lead Generation

The definition and parameters of “inbound marketing” has grown, diminished, twisted, tweaked, modified and stretched. 

 

As of date it includes any method of getting a visitor to click on your site, stay there, snoop around and hopefully buy something or become a healthy lead for someone. 

 

In the process of all this nonsensical defining, marketing experts have forgotten how powerful inbound marketing really is. 

 

“The trick to becoming a great marketer is to accept that not every single form of marketing is necessary for every single client,” warns Wesley Yuhn at Media Oasis. 

 

“You have to know your client, know your client’s customer buying cycles and find out where they are hanging out today.” 

 

Employing Powerful Marketing Techniques

When it comes to diabetic medical supply lead generation in a B2B environment it is going to have to target different potential customers than it would in a B2C strategy.

Yet, the process of inbound marketing is the same.

1. Categorize your target customer - If you are unsure of “who” your target customer is, you must scrutinize your current customers and find out what commonalities they share.

2. Categorize your target customer’s buying cycle- You have to market to the right person at the right time.

3. Categorize your products and services – Start with the products or services that are most popular – the ones that you really don’t have to put effort into selling – and then work down to those that have been collecting dust for more than a year.

4. Create automated campaigns that match your offerings to the customer’s buying cycle – Automated content uploads that are dispersed to your website, your social sites. That done go through emails can be set up quarter-by-quarter to give you the flexibility that you need to tweak the next quarter’s campaign.

5. Use the same strategy across all your links -from the home page to social sites to mobile and email marketing – Every campaign should be discussing, featuring and focused on the same products and services for the entire run of the campaign. Consistency is essential to building trust.

Once the process of targeting potential customers becomes second nature, crafting the content to attract those visitors becomes much more relevant.

The Right Content for the Right Lead

A good content writer must know the profile of your target audience, as it’s found that men are women tend to respond to entirely different marketing strategies.

• Identify your target by gender--Women like story content and are turned off by statistical content while men prefer “just the facts, please” and are bored with the whys and wherefores.

• Your customer is not a disease--Make sure that your content is speaking to a person rather than a disease or disorder. In medical supply marketing, often the content is addressing the disease instead of the customer’s desire or need for the product.

• Listen to your customer’s objections--Objections tell you what your customer really needs and wants in a product or service. You must write those down and find a way to fill the needs instead of focusing on “overcoming” their desire.

Inbound marketing for the purpose of lead generation is the same as cold calling in the brick-and-mortar world. Think about what you would say in a face to face contact and say that without the fluff and flutter of fancy compliments.

Committing to Protocols for Inbound Marketing Leads

 

What happens in your company when a lead is presented to your sales production team?

Is there a consistent set of practices that every member of the team follows? Or are the rules too vague and left to the imagination of the individual team members? 

 

Organization Protocols to Match Marketing Strategies 

 

If you are paying an agency to develop marketing strategy, it must have been costing you a good deal of money. That said, you need those leads in order to please your shareholders and stakeholders with increasing bottom line. 

 

It’s important to establish protocols within your organization that compliments with the rest of your marketing strategy. To that end, your in-house practices are as much a part of your marketing scheme as the Inbound Radio ads and Click2Call mobile advertising that brings in potential customers to your door.

Curiously, WesleyYuhn, the medical marketing guru of the 21^st Century, reminds us that protocols for handling leads are very similar to the techniques that are used to market products. 

 

Reaching the Right Audience

Techniques to collect diabetic medical leads begin with targeting the right audience for your product and streamlining the delivery method that your company is using. Pushing a lead to the right department requires the directing operator to be in the know of the interest level of the caller. Only then he will be able to direct it to the rep with the appropriate skill levels to handle the call. 

 

Reaching Out to Potential Customers 

 

Just as your enterprise reaches out to potential customers through Inbound Radio advertising and Social Media posts, your sales teams and customer service reps should also be reaching out to your current and potential customers through email responses, Facebook conversations and, twitter feeds. 

 

Your team leaders, department managers and administrative staff will also need to reach out to the medical community as well as interested patients with free webinars, video newsletters with updates and case study results from time to time, as part of your email marketing plan. 

 

Utilizing Enticements to Attract Leads

The “buy one get one free” advertising technique is still being used by many companies, only because it works; “Free” is the operative word in both getting customers to try your product, opening the door to customer loyalty. 

 

Don’t Forget a Call to Action

Just as much content fails to include a call to action, many sales people try to avoid asking for the order. It boggles the mind in both instances but asking someone to buy your product is a difficult proposition, even for the experienced sales person. 

 

You must always remember that the “rejection” part of sales helps you in overcoming the fear of failing the company. As the leader of your enterprise, you must think of awarding each department that increases their call to action requests with a team hat proclaiming their victory. 

 

Finally 

 

In a nutshell, you must follow the rules that you institute in your business. Who knows, maybe your employees will reward you with a victory hat of your own down the line.