So, you have decided to become a partner of SOLARGROUP and use all the opportunities of partner marketing. Key questions: where and how to get customers?

There are several sources of customers:
- SMM (Social Media Marketing) and the Internet,
- recommendations of friends,
- your contact list,
- sources of "cold" contacts,
- networking.

Let's talk about how to work with each of them.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING (SMM) AND THE INTERNET

The general principles of SOLARGROUP's partner work on the Internet can be described in two words: multi-channel and systematic.

Every serious partner of SOLARGROUP should have a database of their own information platforms for promoting network business, which basically duplicate the official project communities.

A set of platforms for successful partner activity:
- groups in social media (3-4 main social media platforms),
- chats in Whatsapp and Telegram,
- landing page for capturing contacts of potential investors and partners,
- channels on video hosting sites (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
- pages and accounts in specialized social media (LinkedIn, etc.).

Work on these platforms should be carried out systematically and without interruptions. The news agenda of the communities must fully copy the official project news. You can share news and events directly from the back office, using referral links.

Let's take a closer look at the features of working on the Internet platforms.

A set of platforms for successful partner activity:

1. SOCIAL MEDIA

First of all, we recommend paying attention to social media marketing (SMM). It is very popular now. Because almost the entire paying audience is presented in social media. The number of Facebook, Instagram, VKontakte, LinkedIn subscribers is growing every day and amounts to dozens of millions users. There's your target audience out there anyway, without any doubt. The only question that needs to be answered professionally is how to interact with it so that these people become your customers and partners.

Of course, when you work via social media, your target audience is interested in interacting with you personally, so we recommend paying attention to shaping your personal brand. This is something that you should be doing from the very beginning and never give up.

There are a number of opportunities in social media to attract the target audience to your business account.

- Targeted advertising — is one of the most effective ways to capture new contacts and get traffic into your structure, since it is shown only to those users who meet the specified characteristics. With the help of targeted advertising, you can purposefully and most effectively interact with your potential customers. If you know your target audience well, it will be much easier to find it through targeted advertising in social media.

- Thematic communities. Find potential partners among community owners (in the fields of ecology, electric power, investment, finance, crowdfunding, crowdinvesting, etc.). Register them in the project and invite them to occasionally post important news and offers in partner communities. This way you will add new referrals to your structure, at the same time engaging a new audience in the partner business..

- Personal messages to potential customers. There is another way to find customers associated with thematic communities. By monitoring the comments of community members, you can choose those people who are quite active and make them a business offer in personal messages.

- Comments under the community posts. This method does not require technical knowledge and financial investments. However, it may take quite a lot of time and patience to get the result. Its essence is finding top bloggers in your niche. It is important for their subscribers to be your target audience. You write interesting, attention-grabbing and engaging comments under the posts of these bloggers. Read the post, express your opinion, agree or disagree with the author, initiate a discussion. Many people, after reading the post, go to the comments to read what other people write and to get feedback. Imagine that your comment will be seen, for example, by 50,000 people of your target audience. Even if a tenth of these people visit your page, you will get new potential customers and partners. Provided, of course, that your account is properly arranged. This is a good free way to attract attention to yourself by choosing the audience that you are interested in. In addition to increasing the traffic, it develops your creativity and communication skills, although it is quite labor-intensive

- Cooperation with bloggers. In social media, opinion leaders often influence users' decision-making. Agree on cooperation with the blogger who your target audience is subscribed to and whose channel topic is close to yours. You can pay him or her for promoting your account or invite this person to your team of partners. You will find the opinion leaders you need by monitoring social media, or on blogger exchanges.

- Group of accounts. You can increase the number of target audience members in social media by creating several dozen accounts that need to be arranged and made "live". Each account should be different, feature its own news agenda and systematically acquire a large number of loyal subscribers. You can increase the number of community members by inviting people from other accounts to them, and then start promoting your offers directly through these accounts.

2. SPECIALIZED SOCIAL MEDIA

In specialized social media (LinkedIn, Viadeo, "Moi Krug" ("My Circle"), etc.), it is also possible to display targeted advertising and promote your own posts and communities. Both investors and potentially strong partners can come from such platforms.

3. VIDEO HOSTING SERVICES

Video content is a trending tool for attracting the target audience. If the trend of increasing video content consumption on the Internet continues, then very soon it will take up 90 % of all consumed content. Therefore, it is very important to learn how to create video content as soon as possible.

- Start by making a video about SOLARGROUP, a partner business offer, or about yourself personally. Post it on your YouTube channel and in your social media accounts. There is no need to be afraid to shoot a video if you are a beginner. Speak about your new knowledge. Today, many people have important unresolved questions — your video can answer some of them.

- A properly edited promotional video up to 1 minute long is a great start to work with targeted advertising, for example, on YouTube. Targeted advertising on YouTube is configured through the Google Adwords service and has ample opportunity for selecting the target audience.

- Another effective way to attract traffic to capture new contacts is to place ads with opinion leaders on YouTube. The main thing is not to forget that your offer fits seamlessly into the topic of the channel that you cooperate with. Always ask the blogger to post a pinned comment with your link under the video.

When promoting your own channel, use the maximum of video content about the project, do not forget about hashtags and the channel design. Embed videos from your channel in social media.

4. LANDING PAGE

Another option for promoting on the Internet is a one-page website where you make a specific offer to your target audience. From your own landing page, you can drive traffic both directly to the project's website via your referral link, and to your social media.

- The very first step in creating a landing page is buying an appealing domain name that is relevant to the name or subject of the project.

- Then create a landing page. Website builder services allow you to do this simply and quickly, literally in a few hours.

- On a modern effective landing page, it is especially important to present information in terms of benefits for the target audience. There is no need to sell with a rush and "head-on". Tell the visitor of your website about the advantages that they will receive by becoming an investor or partner of the project.

- You can promote the landing page using contextual advertising. Contextual advertising is advertising that leads to your website. Your target audience sees them primarily in search engines, with certain search queries. They also appear on partner Internet resources, whose subject is connected to your offer.

- Make sure the landing page has a contact capture form (phone number, email). To motivate the user to leave contact information, invite them to subscribe to your newsletter or pick up a free product (gift investment shares within the "Gift to a friend" option). This way you will gradually gain a base of subscribers. Then it is important to work properly with this database: to give people useful content, to embed selling triggers there (that is, to sell without selling, not "directly") - then customers will come from there.

Basically, partners create websites to promote them through contextual advertising services (Yandex and Google). Place links to your website on all platforms where you are working on promotion, provide its address on your business cards.

SOLARGROUP has created several landing pages that contain information about the project and the company. Get acquainted with them yourself and offer the people you invite to the project to do so too. Your referral links to these landing pages are located in the back office, "For Partners" section.

5. BLOGS, FORUMS, NEWS PORTALS

There are a large number of thematic blogs and forums where you can deploy both your own activity and order advertising from administrators. There are dozens and hundreds of such platforms in every country. In Russia, one of the most popular blog hosting websites at the moment is Yandex Dzen.

6. WHATSAPP AND TELEGRAM CHATS

Every contact you have captured somewhere should be in your messenger chat, having previously received a personal message from you. It is better to differentiate chats (one chat for new customers and investors, another one - for partners). With a closer and "warm" contact, always invite the members of your structure to the official chats of the project.

IMPORTANT RECOMMENDATIONS FOR WORKING ONLINE

Set up your ads correctly

You can set up various types of advertising on the Internet yourself. But it will be more effective to hire a specialist so that after a while you do not end up with a complete disappointment, zero result and wasted time and money.
- First, a specialist is constantly engaged in setting up advertising: tests, analytics, viewing new ads.
- Second, this is a completely different approach, more creative, using different angles, testing new strategies.
- Third, delegating advertising to a specialist will allow you to deal with important tasks: recruiting, holding meetings and presentations, communicating with customers.

Before hiring an advertising setup specialist, it is better for you at least to hit the high spots of SMM marketing in order to distinguish an amateur from a professional specialist.

Work with the subscriber base

Subsequently, you need to work competently with the subscriber base obtained through various Internet platforms. You can communicate with potential customers "manually", or you can engage auto sales funnels.

Sales funnels are one of the most effective ways to work with the subscriber base. Through email marketing, chatbots in various social media and messengers, subscribers are converted into your customers. For almost every social media, you can set up a sales funnel (both for a fee and for free), thanks to which your partner business will work in an automatic mode. It is necessary to study the issue of building traffic through sales funnels for each social media separately, since there are specific features and promotion algorithms everywhere.

THE OVERALL RESULT:

how and in what sequence it is most effective to attract customers online, and then scale the business up.

- Get your social media accounts right.
- Develop your personal brand in social media.
- Engage advertising.
- Establish communication with your potential customers through video content, social media news feeds, and useful content on your landing page, and direct targeted ads to these resources.
- Work with subscribers who are in your database, turn them into customers with the help of automated sales funnels.

This set of tools will allow you to forget about the questions "where and how to get customers".

RECOMMENDATIONS: POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS ARE RECOMMENDED TO YOU

When searching for potential customers, turn to other people for recommendations:

- customers and business partners;
- friends who are not your customers, do not participate in your business, but are ready to help you;
- those who for some reason rejected your offer.

Don't be afraid to ask people for help. They like helping. Simply say: "I understand that you are not interested in my offer, but perhaps you know someone who might be interested in it?" - and this can open many new doors for you.

CONTACT LIST

Important recommendations for shaping a contact list.

1. Make a list of contacts by hand. This "old-school" method works best: there is a physiological connection between your hand and your brain that increases your efficiency. The list in the phone book, in the messengers is "lifeless". Sit down, take a notebook and remember the people you've known in your life, write their names down.

2. You need to invite all the people
you've known in your life to the partner business. Everyone, without the context of their perception. There is a common misconception that when we work with a well-off person, he or she needs to be offered to spend money. And when we communicate with a person who has no money, he or she needs to be offered to earn money. But in fact, everyone chooses what to do.

There is no need to bet on superhumans who have a resource in the form of money or skills — it is not a resource that determines a person's success in our system. For example, is it worth inviting a mother of two children into the business? For one woman, this will be an opportunity to succeed and make the future of her children successful, and another will say: "Well, how will I do this, I have no time, I have two children!"

Don't take the "all-seeing-eye" position of deciding which people you let make money and which ones you don't. Just make a step-by-step offer to each person on your list. Through this series of interactions with people, you will form a team of those who will respond, and you will be achieving results with them.

3. Your contact list
will end sooner or later, even if there are as many as 5,000 people in it. It needs to be expanded by networking: the art of making new useful acquaintances.

So, you have made a list of contacts. Now divide all the people from it into three circles.

The inner circle is the people you call yours: friends, relatives, close colleagues, like-minded people.
The middle circle is friends, those with whom you cross paths on holidays, do sports, go on vacation, and so on.
The outer circle is people with whom you do not communicate closely and often, such as former classmates, your hairdresser, manicurist, and so on.

When working with the contact list, different tactics are used.

From the inner circle to the outer one.
This tactic has an ultimate advantage: the so-called "me-argument". If your environment trusts you, then it is logical that it will also trust what you are talking about. But there is also a pitfall in this "me-argument". Let's say you haven't had any entrepreneurial experience in your life yet, you are a doctor, an engineer or a student who recently graduated from school and wants to try yourself in this business. Imagine that you will begin to tell your inner circle about the partner business and say that thanks to it you can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars and drive a cool car¨ Question: what will the reaction of people be?! They may say to you: "You are a doctor - go treat people! You're an engineer - go design! You are a student - go study!” People close to you already have a certain image of you that they are used to, and when you start something new, you want to appear in a new quality, your environment for some internal reasons may either be afraid or against these changes. Therefore, the "me-argument" does not always work well.

From the outer circle to the inner one.
In order to convince an almost "cold" person that investing in the project and partner business is great, you need to have strong arguments, rely on your professionalism and be ready for objections. But there is also a big advantage: this customer does not know what you are, so in his or her eyes you can create any image of yourself (a personal brand), depending on how you position and feel about yourself. For example, the image of an entrepreneur who provides informational support to SOLARGROUP and the project, develops the partner network. It doesn't matter who you used to be before. Now you have a new image, and over time, people in this circle and in general all the people you're going to cross paths with will buy that image exactly.

OUR RECOMMENDATION!
If you are a beginner and have made your first contact list, try different tactics and understand which one will be right for you. Is it easier for you to communicate with people you know well, relying on them trusting you? Or is it easier for you to work with strangers without any fear of losing them, and in the process learn to create the right image of yourself? A universal entrepreneur can work in different ways. In any business, the most important thing is to start!

"COLD" CONTACTS

Special mention should be made of working with the database of "cold" contacts. These are strangers who you know almost nothing about and who you want to make a business offer to. Contact information can be collected in a customer database that someone has provided to you (the target audience of such a database has some common interest, so it is more efficient to work with it, you do not need to spend time on creating it). Or you can find people's contacts in advertisements, on job search websites, etc.

Communication with "cold" contacts can be carried out through a phone call to make an appointment, a personal message in social media, or even an acquaintance on the street.

Let's look at examples of communication by phone. Your dialogue will develop depending on what principle you applied when looking for a contact.

A phone call to a person who is looking for a job. Say that you have a business offer, not a job opening.

A: Hello, my name is Maria, I saw your ad on the job search website. Is it convenient for you to talk now?
B: Yes, it is.
A: Am I right to assume that you are looking for a job in the field of logistics.
B: Yes, that's right.
A: Good. And you are willing to consider an offer that is not related to this industry and is essentially not a job, but a business offer. The fact is that I am currently engaged in the development and promotion of the project and I need partners to expand the partner business.
B: No. (in the "cold" market, the dropout conversion rate is very large.)
B: What's the offer? Tell me more ... (further development depends on the quality of your script and presentation).

You collect those contacts from the classified ads and call them.

Example of a conversation

"A: Hello, is this Roman?!
B: Yes, Roman speaking.
A: Hello, Roman. My name is Maria. I saw your phone number in an ad in the advertising catalog. Is it convenient for you to talk now?
B: Yes, it is.
A: Am I right to assume that you are engaged in the development of a dance school (name)?
B: Yes, that's what I do.
A: Cool! The fact is that I am engaged in the development of a business project and successfully cooperate with people from your industry. I came across your ad and I had a thought: would you consider offers that are indirectly related to your industry?
B: What kind of offers? It depends, let's discuss them.
A: Let me briefly explain what the point is¨"

The structure of a conversation with a "cold" contact:

- introduce yourself;
- explain where you got the customer's phone number from;
- specify whether you understand correctly what a person does,
- state that you have experience working with people in this industry (i.e., establish a link);
- speak about why you are calling: "I have an offer, are you ready...?"

It is quite likely that a person can respond in the following way: "No, don't call me ever again." In the "cold" market, the dropout conversion rate is very high. But the interlocutor may become curious, and further development of the conversation depends on the quality of the conversation scenario, which is better to consider in advance.

LET'S SUM UP THE RESULTS

The main problem of working with "cold" contacts is a high dropout, low conversion rate. But sometimes spontaneous communication with a stranger, when you feel an impulse, gives an amazing fruitful result of further partnersip. Therefore, try this method, do not be afraid to talk and get acquainted with people. Remember: this is an honest method aimed at implementing a good and useful business, and it can provide good results.

NETWORKING

Networking is the art of creating, maintaining and developing useful connections and relationships with other people.

The word "networking" itself consists of two roots: "net" and "work". This is the technology of working on your network of contacts. You can make new acquaintances both offline at various events, and online — there are a lot of such opportunities in the modern world.

A few recommendations on how to achieve success in networking

DO NOT try to sell the idea, project and partner business right away when you get acquainted. If you start communicating with immediately showing the website, encourage the person to invest in the project because it is profitable and important for the planet - this is not networking, it is a direct sale to a "cold" customer. Phrases like: "I can see from your look that this is a very relevant topic for you. Let me tell you more about it," cause rejection, because a person sees that you want to use him or her to your advantage. This closes the door to building a trusting relationship.

The only thing you have to sell when you meet a person is yourself. Prepare a short self-presentation with answers to three questions.

- Who are you? I am a partner of the international financial company SOLARGROUP that conducts its activities in the field of crowdinvesting.

- What do you do? I help organize funding of promising technological commercial projects around the world through a crowd investment mechanism and an extensive partner network.

- How can you be useful? I can help you become a co-owner of a promising company at the venture stage, so that in the future you will have the opportunity to receive passive income in dividends from the company's profits.

Earn here and now, using the partner business opportunities as the main or additional source of income.

Become involved in solving global environmental problems by promoting and attracting funding for innovative projects that contribute to the preservation of our planet.

Show a sincere interest in the person.
"For example, you meet at a public event, where people usually feel quite constrained, experience inner discomfort and subconsciously look for people who they will be comfortable next to. You can make your interlocutor feel better around you. Pay him or her a sincere compliment, without inventing anything, show him a lively emotional interest. This is an easy way to lay the foundation for a trusting relationship here and now.

In order to create the right emotional mood for networking, learn to see the good in people. First, look around and note the details in people that you like. It can be a strong energy, a pleasant voice, a stylish tie or an open smile. Make compliments first not out loud, but inside yourself, people feel it, and you will see that the situation around is becoming warmer.

This will help you get in the mood for a dialogue with your interlocutor. After you find out who he or she is and what they do, you can say: "You know, I've always been interested in how this business works from the inside, it seems to me that people with great willpower succeed in it." Or genuinely ask: ""Is it true what they say about your field..."

Be interesting.
The interlocutor should be interested in further communication with you: this is the right result of networking, and not the fact of selling here and now. When you have sparked a person's interest, offer to exchange contacts, say: "If you're interested, let's meet again, I'll send you detailed information and we'll continue the dialogue." When a person himself, after meeting you, writes to you and says "I'm interested" - it's a much more favorable position both for you and for the sale. You can't but agree that it's much more effective to sell when people want to buy from you. This is the result of proper networking. We all don't like to be sold things. But we all love it when we buy.

Further development of the relationship is about the art of continuing your contact, which is called "follow-up". This is what we do after networking.

In the art of "follow-up", there is a whole range of actions that you perform in order for your new contact to turn into a partnership, into a friendship, or just into a competent, correct recognition (who you are, what you do and what you can be useful for).

The art of "follow-up" comprises a sequence of actions.

1. Record the details of the acquaintance. When the event ends, the first thing you need to do before you go home and distract yourself with some other tasks is to give yourself 5 minutes of time and note down all the people you have met. Write a short comment about each of them: what kind of person it is, what he or she does, what you talked about and what you agreed on. This is important, because in 2 weeks, you will forget about all this and, picking up his or her business card, you will not remember anything. That's why you need to write down a brief summary of your acquaintance right off the bat.

2. Arrange all the new contacts according to the principle of "hot", "warm", "cold" relative to the purpose of your networking. After all, networking begins with the fact that you set a goal, define tasks for achieving this goal and criteria by which you can judge the success of your actions.

There will be different people among your new acquaintances.

"Hot" - those who can lead you to your network goal quickly.

"Warm" - people who can indirectly help you reach your target audience.

"Cold" - just interesting people you've met.

3. Take the first step by writing a message to the person in the messenger that you agreed on when meeting. You can develop a short message in advance about who you are, where you met, with a link to your social media. For example: "Hi, this is Maria. We met there, let me remind you what I do, thank you for letting me get to know you."

And then, depending on the context of meeting this person, if this person is from the "hot" list, you offer him or her to meet, to send some materials. And you continue to develop your relationship.

It is important to remind a person from the "warm" list about yourself by calling or writing a message and offering a mutual assistance option. Do not hesitate to ask people for help, most people like helping each other.

If a person is from the "cold" list, write: "I will be glad to keep in touch with you. If there are any ideas, I am open." As a rule, the person's response is: "Okay." He or she sends their own links or sends a message: "You know, I've been thinking and remembered...", which already gives a reason to continue the dialogue.

Thus, with the help of networking, you can find and attract new interested people every month in the city where you live.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING:

start networking now! Many people spend a lot of time on preparing and planning, but no one has ever managed to achieve success by planning alone. If you have to choose between "do it perfectly sometime in the future" and "do it imperfectly now", of course, the second approach is better. Do it with a drive, an interest in contacting another person.

SEARCHING AND ENGAGING CUSTOMERS