Money Talks, Does Your Marketing?
Everyone knows that money talks and BS walks. The better question: Is your marketing talking or is it full of BS? If your marketing is like most companies’ marketing, it probably is talking but you’re not going to like what it’s saying: “Goodbye.” That’s because when it comes to the “conversation” that your marketing is having, it’s more of a lector than a conversation.
That is because you are talking - or should I say dictating - what you want to hear, instead of focusing on your prospects’ beliefs, needs, motivations and barriers toward a particular problem. Notice I said “problem”. That’s because it’s not about what you sell, or how wonderful you are. It’s about the problem your prospects have and how they perceive them.
So what can you do to stop dictating and start talking….with the ultimate goal of making more money? Well, it all starts with understanding what motives your prospect and their buying team. By getting a better understanding what motivates these consumers or groups, the better you can shape your communications and improve your conversation with them. The more actionable the insight you have into how your customer buys and what motivates them to buy, the more you can influence their actions.
Words, voices, layout and design, timing and methods of communications are all components of the marketing process that are likely to impact your prospects’ decision-making process in a positive way when grounded with an effective two-way communication strategy. In order to have a two-way conversation, you need to understand your prospects better and start listening to their actions. The best executions of these practices enable consumers to experience marketing, sales, and customer service communication as engaging and compelling. In such cases, consumers act without thought or hesitation. It does not feel as if they are being sold, but rather that they are buying something. That is a huge difference.
One way you can leverage the power of two-way communication, and the power of behavioral science, is through marketing automation. Marketing automation provides you the opportunity to track and read your customers’ actions. By using marketing automation to know deliver the correct message at the correct time, you can help your company land new customers. It can also help with current customers by reducing churn, increasing cross-sell or up-sell opportunities, and to get referrals.
How is this done, you ask? We recommend doing the following:
- Find your Midas touch
Marketing automation provides you the opportunity to read many actions from your prospects/customers, but you can easily send them too many messages and be perceived as spammers. Understanding how and when to “touch” your customers and prospects is central to success in implementing marketing automation, or any marketing strategy. What you need to do is understand what each of their actions means and what they next step needs are. If your prospect shows that they are starting to move from general awareness of a problem to looking for a solution, this is the time to send buy messages. Don’t do this any time your prospect visits your site, or even worse a campaign that is not based on any actions of your prospect. Finding your Midas touch means understanding or finding what frequency of contact your prospects want to engage with you, not the other way around. Determining the right amount of correspondence is essential. Too much communication can quickly send customers packing. Not enough communication can have the same disastrous result, as you lose top-of-mind awareness and customers grow susceptible to competitor’s offers. Planning, testing and the experienced hand of a communications partner are key to finding how much is enough to get results.
- Send the correct message
Just as important - or maybe even more important - is sending the correct message. You need to send them a message that will inspire them to take action. Finding and delivering a message that will engage your prospects and inspire them to take action begins with research. You need to understand who they are, what motives them personally, and professionally, as well as what their typical buying process looks like. By understanding these factors, you will be able to determine what your prospect is looking for at each stage of their buying process. For example, you do not want to send a 20% off offer to a prospect that does not even know if they need your production or solution. Conversely, you also do not want to miss the opportunity to put the correct offer to buy or talk to your sales people because you were too busy sending the more information about your latest webinar or event.
- Always work at improving.
Your customers’ behaviors will always be changing; that means you need to be always improving your timing and message. The problems you customer face are always evolving and you need to evolve with them. By leveraging the power of marketing automation and understanding your customer, you can always be looking at what your customers are doing and how they are reacting to your timing and message. Don’t miss this opportunity to improve. Doing the same thing over again and again and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.
The bottom-line result for companies employing behavioral science strategies and improving their conversation is profound, often anywhere between 10 times and 30 times the response rates over traditional branding and marketing techniques. It all starts when you stop dictating, start listening and join your prospects/customers in their conversation, not yours.
Want to learn more about how to build a lead generation engine that understands how your customers buy and maps to it? Check out this free guide.
The Executives' Guide to Building a Lead Generation Engine
Looking for ways for marketing to show ROI? This guide will help you build a lead generation engine that maps to your customers buying process and delivers maximum measurable ROI. Download our free The Executives' Guide to Building a Lead Generation Engine.