If you look at a typical sales funnel today, digital marketing has already educated customers and helped them make decisions well before talking to sales. In fact, virtually everything in traditional sales is equally despised and ineffectual. The only real way to get more customers in the current marketplace is to have better digital marketing.
The problem is that people have so much information overload. Recent studies show we have the 7 second attention span of a gold-fish. You need a better strategy to attract your ideal customer when they are ready to buy.
We all have a story of how the business was started. It is the genesis of how we’ve triumphed and endured. Add your beliefs about service and you have a direct message to connect with your best prospects. Telling stories is a difficult skill to master, but you get better with practice and are infinitely more interesting.
Rank your best customers and discover your secret sauce to Pumpkin Plan Your Marketing. When you figure out the immutable laws that make your organization different and draw the very customers you love, then you have a roadmap for a better value proposition AND more notice in the marketplace. It’s not an easy drill and quite painful to realize how much time you’ve wasted doing things that don’t matter to you or your dream customer.
The average business spends less than $1 per customer on each marketing transaction. One of our industry’s leading mentors, Robin Robins, has a great line she regularly uses: “E-mails are like toots in the wind.” Good marketers today have customers coming to them and spend $35 per customer interaction with things like a Shock-and-Awe box. Common content may include: video, book, case study, special report, and industry comparison. Using this approach, customers get that you know what you’re doing and receive something of value regardless of whether you do business. Put another way, they trust what you say and you both can have a business discussion. Quickly understanding what each other does and qualifying or disqualifying a fit is a win for everyone.
Obviously, your website is a key asset for your marketing. However, the world recently changed dramatically when Google announced SSL encryption for better search ranking. Not only are potential customers put off by your lack of security, but you’re unwittingly letting competitors track your keywords too.
Likewise, in breaking news, Mobilegeddon has happened and who cares if there used to be an App for that? Google and Apple are at war and Google has also given search ranking preference to mobile enabled sites. Most Apps don’t run on all types of phones and the majority offer a paltry set of features versus a website.
You also shouldn’t have a separate mobile site. The duplicate content is penalized in search engines and the development costs to maintain are also double. Winners in their industry will be the first to publish responsive websites.
The mantra is often content is king and you should publish something compelling weekly. I’d argue that content is a distant third behind strategy and design. Weekly is a good metric, but monthly is more attainable especially if you focus on quality. The best posts are when you uniquely answer customer questions or greatly improve upon what is available on the web using a skyscraper analogy. Finally, approaches like expanded lists give readers bite sized content to try or research a point of interest and come back later.
Give it away. Not all of your secrets, but something of value like a 21 page report of your industry. Show your expertise and besides how many people are you reaching leaving that knowledge in your head or on the file server? Competitors may try to copy you, but the source and author make them quickly exposed.
No, you shouldn’t be a one trick pony. Besides a website, write a revealing book and become an authority. Then have warming events and giveaways. Supercharge your search rankings and have something noteworthy to publicize as well.
All of which leads to the concept of marketing oil wells. Smile and dial, SPAM e-mail, and dropping by in person hasn’t worked for over a decade. Get smarter and have several campaigns that run continuously like events, webcasts or podcasts, and regular blog or newsletter. Identify your dream customers and target what they need so they will come to you.
Finally, measure sales and not how well you rank or how smart you seem. Last year, the published number was something like 48 times that a customer must see your name or hear your pitch before they buy. You’ll have some miserable failures, but the most common mistake is trying something once or twice and then stopping. It often takes six months to a year before you can measure how viable a marketing campaign is for your business.