The Secret to Appealing to Prospective Customers
Finding new, on-brand customer leads can be challenging. In fact, business owners and CEOs often say this is their hardest aspect of their job (BusinessKnowHow.com). What if there was a way to attract your dream customer to your business, rather than having to go out and find them? If that sounds too good to be true, we promise it’s not!
The secret to gaining qualified customer leads is by providing them with consistent, useful, and timely content. Doing this will attract them to you instead of hunting them down and hoping they hear your message.
There are numerous ways you can develop engaging content for potential customers. Today, we will cover three: blogging, value exchanges, and sales funnels.
Blogging
If you’re looking for a way to attract customers to your website and improve SEO, this is it. Blogging allows you to cater directly to your dream customer. Trying to appeal to members of the health care industry? Create a list of potential topics they may find interesting and begin creating blog posts. For example, one week you could cover effective public relations tactics in the pediatrics field, and the next week you could develop a post about the benefits of using social media for optometry professionals.
To ensure you’re blogging effectively, stick to the rules below:
- For topic ideas, review your buyer personas to ensure you’re hitting on topics they will be interested in.
- Create and publish content consistently. Figure out how many times per month you’ll develop a new post and be sure to stick to that timeframe.
- Incorporate your brand’s keywords throughout your content. Be sure they flow smoothly. Don’t force keywords into your content.
Value Exchanges
Value exchanges allow you to offer engaging content to your leads, while capturing their contact information. Your contact list is your company’s most valuable asset. Capturing a potential lead’s email address is especially powerful. In fact, for every dollar spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is $44. Email is by far, one of the most effective means of communication in today’s market. By 2016, there will be more than 4.3 billion email accounts in existence (via Reach Marketing).
Make the most out of your email contact list:
- It’s important to embed the offer on a highly viewed page. Often times the homepage is the best spot for a value exchange, although if you’re driving traffic to a specific landing page through several channels, that may work well too.
- Be sure to offer something of value (something that someone would be willing to pay for). The more valuable the offer, the more likely people will share their contact information with you.
- Refresh your value exchange every few months to attract different segments of your audience.
Sales Funnels
Most businesses are already using email marketing to promote their brand and engage customers, but a surprising number have not incorporated a sales funnel into their email strategy. Sales funnels are a series of automated emails (sometimes referred to as auto-responders) that are triggered by an action, or set of actions, that a potential customer makes. For example, you might create a series of three emails to be sent after someone has initially signed up for your email list. The first email might include tips on your products or services, the second could be about an upcoming event, and the last email might feature information that will help your lead make a decision to purchase your product or service. Each email should be sent at strategic time intervals that correspond with your ideal customer’s buying cycle.
Here are a few tips to creating an effective sales funnel:
- We recommend including at least three emails in your series. This will allow you to evaluate the series as a whole, as well as each of the individual components so you can analyze and tweak each one individually. This will help to pinpoint exactly which elements are affecting your results.
- Educate, don’t sell. Ensure the initial emails in your series are not trying to sell something. You want the customer to become aware of their own needs, discover an appropriate solution through research and education (that you provide), and finally, the last piece of the decision-making process will be how your company can help them to achieve their goals. Since you’ve provided them with valuable information throughout the buying process, you will have already positioned your company as an expert in your industry and a trusted resource.
- Be relevant! Do your research so the topics you cover in your emails are of interest to your audience.
Let’s chat about implementing our Inbound Marketing services for your business! Contact us today at info@mixmainemarketing.com or (207) 622-0110.
