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If you sweat and hustle, build a sales organization, interrupt people with traditional media, then you may get a few eyeballs to look your way and pay attention. You may make more enemies than friends in the process, as well. Interrupting people has the tendency of ruining a second chance. Your brand is on the line. That is the detriment of outbound marketing.

However, inbound marketing relies on one key differentiator – connection. As people are searching for what they want or tuned into the information, products and services that will help them grow their business, improve their health and better their relationships, there is opportunity to provide value.

Today, billions of searches happened. People spent enormous amounts of time on social media. If you email someone, they open it within a few minutes. Everyone is plugged in at work or on their mobile device. How can you connect? Here’s how we help our customers connect in this dizzying world of information:

• Answers. There’s something our clients take for granted. They have answers which they know like the back of their hand. They have mastered their trade. We help them share their answers and make it part of the buying process with their audience.
• Stories. We tune into stories. It is part of our inherent psyche. Telling the stories of success, the building processes and the history of who you are all connects. We do business with people and organizations we like and can identify with. Stories help to reflect your brand for those that resonate and want to connect.
• Care. What do you do to make your customers feel special? All things being equal, the way you service and show care needs to come through in the personality and soul of your brand. Examples and testimonials help with this. Proof needs to be shown and shared to connect.

Look at the answer (comfortable shoes), stories (buy one give one) and care (customer service) that Toms is delivering and connecting with. They continue to grow their audience and their authenticity shines through and connects. Just one example of many that are out there connecting with their audiences.

How could you do better?

With the accessibility of information far and wide on the internet via search engines and social media, the customer experience starts far before any up close contact with your company. How you talk, contribute and are talked about creates a persona that draws attraction or distaste for those looking for information to meet a real or felt need.

The customer experience you create with complete strangers sets the tone for how newcomers to your brand will feel about you. There are a few components that should be part of your inbound marketing strategy that can create a continuum as a stranger moves from indifference to intimacy:

• Knowledge sharing. Buyers don’t spend as much time as you thinking about your industry. Start at a rudimentary level and provide knowledge that orients newcomers to what they should know. Frame what a new buyer should be thinking about to make an intelligible decision about what you offer. Be a resource and you earn further trust to being consulted.
• Create conversation. Be a catalyst for thought and provoke conversations around topics. This can be done on various social media platforms, forums and on your corporate blog. Fostering thought and helping dialogue positions you as a leader in your space. Be sure you know what you are talking about and share it with the world.
• Relevant connections. Ensure that a link, pay-per-click ad or comment on a site links to a relevant landing page. Generic pages break a thought process. Building congruent process is extra work but it is worthwhile. It creates a customer experience that is whole and connected. Connecting via links and calls to action in a logical path increases your opportunity to eventually engage.

We like to think about the customer experience up close and personal. With buyers able to check us out or discover us from far away and impersonally now, your brand needs to be aligned and managed.

What do you think? How can you make the customer experience broader and more strategic?

While it may feel good to market because of the power and the tools available, is it really good overall? Aren’t buyers (like yourself) keen on what is marketing and what is substance? We know how to block out the noise.

If someone pitches you on vanity metrics such as:

• How many likes you have
• Retweets
• Opens
• List size

then think twice. Marketing is a feel good and the numbers are often about you, not your buyer. The sleight of hand of focusing on activities rather than results is the tool of the marketer.

Inbound Marketing Is Strategic

On the other hand, inbound marketing accounts for how the buyer moves through a systematic process that they like. You are making it convenient for them to get what they want. You present substance not noise.

Of course, this approach is hard work. You have to pay attention and truly understand who your fans are and what they really want. You block out the noise of the marketer and lead instead. Lead them with your value and conviction.

There is thinking around process and being helpful. If you get this kind of permission, then your process produces fans, sales and loyalty. Tuning in requires an intense focus to help people buy.

Just because you have a microphone with every social media system available, should you spam the world? I would say to leave that for the salesmen who don’t have a strategy. Beware of them and do the hard work of connecting, providing value and telling your story. That is what makes tools powerful.

What kind of marketing are you running?

There is a new strategy that is at play and has been at play in marketing to customers.  It is much less about how great you are and more about how valuable you are.  Determining your value is in the control of the buyer.  They search out what they want and put the pieces together for solving their problem.  You likely do the very same thing when you are looking for entertainment, solutions or pain relief.  You are buying and avoiding the selling until the very end when you determine you are ready.

Getting a premature sales call while you are still shopping is invasive and annoying.  It can also reduce trust.

Your marketing systems and sales process should walk with the buyer in a way that is congruent with how they are walking their own process.  Consider integrating the following as part of your marketing strategies:

1. Provide answers to their problems.  Think long and hard about the problems that your buyers have and why they would use what you offer to solve it.  Talk about those problems.  Actually, write about them.  Record video and audio.  Create a place on your site that allows for access to your knowledge.  Your knowledge is an asset when it is packaged and speaks to problems.
2. Focus on building trust.  Assume everyone is busy and they do not want to be interrupted.  Be respectful.  Make your contact count.  Cold calls do not work.  Spam is highly intrusive.  Build trust over time.  Avoid the illusion that one smart email or call will close a sale.  Instead, build a system that provides relevant, timely and personal value over time.
3. Create small steps to commitment.  If “buy now” is your strategy, then you must have high emotion and pain for it to work.  Assuming that you are not selling a heart transplant or antivenom, your buying process can be more segmented.  Offer a webinar first to educate.  Or give a free consultation.  See how small you can get without inconveniencing the buyer.  This creates a connection and value being exchanged – attention for service.  Small steps lead to bigger results later.

You can see the old school sales people desperately trying to connect with interruption.  They still cold call you or send an unsolicited email or direct mail piece.  They set themselves up to be ignored.

You have the option today to interrupt people and do what is uninvited and ineffective.  Or you can spend your energy, focus and budgets on growing something that will work predictably over time.  It’s how buying is done.

What do you think?  How are you connecting with buyers today that does not interrupt?

Beware Of Marketing Automation Talking Heads

Our team has had some interesting interactions lately with companies and people who are seeking to make a dollar from software and advice in the marketing automation space.  We were approached by Marketo for example who continually called our 800 number because they are tracking some errant site clicks which their system purports is one of us.  It’s an inside sales job and the persistence is typical of a sales-minded person.  The dialogue is not around value.  It is around selling us software, though we are not candidates.  If their marketing automation software works, then shouldn’t I feel ready to buy rather than annoyed that they are calling?

Now, we are not knocking Marketo, specifically.  We see the behavior across the board with vendors, other consultants and marketing opportunists.  The competition is fierce for software providers.  There has been a lot of venture money invested.  Despite their gospel of what their software can do, they approach sales similarly to many other cold calling organizations.  It’s aggressive and about them.

We pose these questions:

• What does an aggressive selling engagement say about the effectiveness of your marketing automation process?
• Just because I click, does it mean you can call me?  Why would that be more welcome?
• Why can’t you wait for me to call in when I’m ready?
• What does your cold calling do to your brand and value perception?

I think the questions are valid.  If the software is so great, then why act contrary to its design and promises?

If you buy marketing automation software, note how you are handled and approached in sales.  Did the automation truly nurture you and build trust?  That’s talking strategy.  Maybe that’s the key.  It’s a different focus than just software.  You may have to call us for that.

What would it look like if your products or services were bought rather than sold?  Feel free to comment.

• We change channels for radio ads.
• We tear up and throw out junk mail.
• We don’t pick up because of caller id
• We mark email as spam from strangers
• We skip sites with unwelcome banners
• We completely ignore billboards and signs
• We sign up for “Do Not Call” and “Do Not Fax”
• We walk by the overbearing salesperson
• We skip the magazine ads
• We use free Craigslist rather than old school classifieds

While marketers have gotten creative throwing money at more colorful and refined artwork that interrupts us, buyers have built up defenses to block out the noise.  We have gotten quite good at blocking, ignoring and reporting unwelcome marketing.

We do other things that have our attention:

• We spend over 3 hours a day online
• We click
• We search
• We read valuable email
• We post to Twitter and Facebook
• We consume content
• We educate ourselves
• We read stories
• We raise our hands when we are ready
• We play with our smart phones
• We ask our friends for advice

So how come there is so much money spent on bad, brainless marketing when our behaviors are pretty obvious and congruent?  Why do businesses sell the way they did 20 years ago rather than how we buy today?

I say go where the attention and focus is.  Build connection each step of the way that makes you desirable.  Then, maybe, you get a chance to have a conversation that matters with someone you desperately want as your customer.  Make it personal.  Study it.  Create immense value.  Then make it repeatable.

You will then have a system and process which automates your marketing approach.  You can be strategic in your marketing automation rather than desperate and hopeful in old strategies that are hit or miss.

What do you think?  Feel free to comment.

If you court your buyer too early, you can violate trust.  It is intrusive and unsynced with how they would prefer to move through the process of buying.

At some point, a switch occurs.  When the buyer feels ready, they move into engagement.  Selling becomes easy at this point.  The hard work beforehand is a process.  The actual sale is an event.  Create a personalized, predictable and relevant process and you create repeatable events for your business.

Here is the heavy lifting that marketing automation does before the event of a sale:

1. Creates Awareness:  The marketplace is saturated and noisy.  Marketing automation gets past this noise by connecting with the buyer in an impactful and precise way based on their behaviors and preferences.  It is targeted when a well-designed marketing strategy has been implemented.
2. Educates: Assume you know much, much more than your buyer.  You think about your product or service all the time.  Your buyer is buying when they need something.  There is a long list of items they have and you are one item in time and attention they are focused on.  They want to learn as much as possible, preferably from you.  Your marketing automation strategy should empower the buyer with knowledge which you have.
3. Builds Trust: Your brand becomes part of the flesh and blood of your marketing automation system and touchpoints.  Frequency helps to spotlight your brand.  Insight and expertise positions you in the mind of the customer as the leader.  They want to pick the leader.  Effective marketing automation strategies build trust by positioning your leadership and your care by adding value as they are learning.
4. Measures Interest: You can’t keep calling your unseen buyer.  However, their digital body language is telling you many things if you can capture it and analyze it.  You can see what content they are interested in, how they move through a decision tree and the level of interest they have ongoing.  Scoring what is invisible and surfacing it for sales readies the conversation your company will eventually have.
5. Qualifies Leads: If your expensive sales team is wasting time talking to people that will never buy, then it is a waste of resources and money.  Allow your system to direct such uninterested prospects to some kind of referral nurturing campaign.  The workload for your sales team can be focused and cut down by seeing your marketing automation system percolate with the most qualified leads.
6. Positions The Sales Meeting: Imagine someone who is already sold.  They are ready to do business with you.  They know your value proposition and they trust you.  This is the result of marketing automation executed well.  Your buyer feels like they know you because of the hard work of your marketing automation processes.

There are two ways to sell – you call people or they call you.  Calling people has natural limits.  You can only do it so often.  It is linear and inefficient.  It takes manpower and will power.

People calling you can scale as a business process.  It affords you better opportunities with higher levels of effectiveness.

Take a look at your selling process.  Think through how it works and what you would want your buyer to experience.  Imagine a process which connects personally and moves the buyer forward towards the sale.

What would stop you from implementing such a system?

Inbound marketing has the following conversion points:

1. Visitors: These are a high quantity of people that find you from search or marketing efforts.  They visit your site and will engage your content if it is relevant and remarkable.  If you do not meet this criteria, then you lose visitor stickiness.
2. Leads: A lead is someone who chooses to exchange their anonymity for something of value.  As trust is built from your content, then their eagerness for a higher level of value means that they identify themselves.  They will give you their email address and name when they get access to white papers, video, guides, ebooks and other quality produced items that help them solve a problem.
3. Prospects: These are people that move through the marketing funnel and say, “Yes,” to engaging your sales process.  They agree to a meeting, a trial of software or purchasing an item.  High trust and/or high pain has created this opportunity for your business.

Conversion

Think about when you buy.  It is a process which starts with awareness moves through education and then escalates to action based on trust.

If you disrupt the natural buying process by injecting your salesmanship or not providing a logical next step, then a conversion point is affected.  In our attention economy, it is difficult to regain ground.

Each of the steps need to be monitored and walked with analytics that reveal how your buyers are moving through the funnel.  As you are building your process, it becomes an exercise in refinement and iteration.  Here is what to look for:

• Content Interest.  Understand what your visitors are looking at specifically and how deep they delve.  Their affinities will provide insight into how to create further content which builds upon the initial search.
• Call To Action Value. Your value piece to generate a lead takes up valuable real estate with each content piece.  Ensure there is a logical and attractive next step to your call to action.  Analyzing the number of new emails you get will determine success.  Drive the ratio between Leads to Visitors by carefully reviewing where the drop offs are between the content consumption and the actual sign-ups for your value pieces.
• Nurturing.  Continue to build momentum and trust with Leads by delivering ongoing value and nurturing.  Timeliness and personal messages which connect based on their behaviors are required.  This is an intelligent marketing automation process that has responsive engagement with the prospect.  Nurturing is the appropriate strategy where premature sales engagement might otherwise be used.

You may be getting visitors, but converting them to viable sales opportunities requires focus and systems to drive the conversion points.  These areas of iteration will be the crux points for making your inbound marketing strategies and systems a continuing asset for lead generation and lead conversion in your business.

What areas can you optimize for helping visitors become prospects?  Feel free to comment below.

1. They were searching for something
2. They saw an interesting link via social media from a friend or contact
3. They were referred by a message
4. You were selling brilliantly

Really, when someone finds you, they are looking for something.  You got their attention because they were focused on something that resonated.

If I am sick and tired of my weight, I start to notice diet tips and fitness advice where I might have ignored it previously.  If my car needs to be replaced, I become more aware of new car models and even tune into the radio ad.

Timing is everything if you are trying to connect.  However, when your buyer is trying to connect, then your market is everything.  There are likely an abundance of people looking for what you offer.  It just may not be at the same time or your desired time.

Timing

Your website visitors are there because something in their timing and attention got them to your content.  It resonated.  The depth of their interest and their intent needs to be measured and nurtured to do anything worthwhile.  Clicking away is too easy and too convenient.

Part of building successful content marketing and marketing automation requires observing how your potential buyer is moving through your content.  Sequencing what they are offered and seeing what they engage with is critical for helping your marketing systems become smarter and more automated.  This requires analysis of the drop off points and seeing where the sticking points are.

With such a vast pool of potential visitors, their timing is based on their initiative.  Ensure you can decipher the interest and intent coming from each of your visitors and focus on how your next steps in the buying process line up to your theories.

It is part of the art of automation with personalization.

What are the things you notice about how your visitors behave?

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Source

The continual hard work of creating relevant and remarkable content is the anchor to effective marketing today.  Buyers are looking for information.  They share remarkable content with their network in rather easy ways today.

If your writing is boring, then you will be a quick click without any engagement by the buyer.  Building such  has to be a relentless pursuit for anyone serious about building trust with anonymous buyers.  Here are some things to help you in that pursuit:

1. Discuss Problems.  Be sure to articulate the problem you solve with clarity and passion.  Help buyers to know you identify with their specific pain.  This is the starting point for connection.
2. Lead. Your writing should carry authority because you know what you are talking about.  Expertise from your immersion in your subject matter needs to unabashedly shine through.  This is leadership.  Ensure your tone helps to communicate confidence to your reader.  Assert your opinions and advice.  Be the leader.
3. Connect.  Be authentic and be human in your voice.  This helps to connect your writing to the reader who does not know you.
4. Drive The Point. There needs to be a singular focus to your content pieces.  Ensure that you funnel towards a specific goal and engage the reader to a call to action or a comment.
5. Write Habitually. Excellent content comes from persistence in writing.  Writing begets good writing over time.  Ensure it is part of your continual method for communicating and stay abreast of current issues.  Writing requires knowledge, thought and leadership.  These should come from your continual growth as a leader.

The rewards for being remarkable range from fanfare to revenue.  Every day, people are searching for content which helps them solve problems and get to their personal goals.  Within this vast universe of information, you cannot afford to shoot for anything less than remarkable.

How is content part of your strategy?  Feel free to comment below.

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