Your marketing strategy will either evolve to keep in step with your industry, or you will become less relevant. As you are looking at the new year, get rid of the gimmicks. Commit to building something that will grow your brand. It is hard work and discipline if you are coming from old ways of doing things. But here is today’s reality:

• Buyers know how to filter out spam. Your billboard, junk mail, cold call, email blast and social media blitz is disruptive and damages your brand. Don’t be known as a spammer.
• Buying starts with value first. Before you get contacted, you are being researched. The internet has allowed for self-service around our value offerings. Be valuable and provide the answers to what a buyer is asking. Be the authority. Build trust. Watch your phone ring. It is about preparing for success.
• Winning is a process of failure. You have to try things and see whether there is interest. Leads will develop from engagement with your content and value proposition. You have to test, analyze, refine and work harder than everyone else. Doing so increases your chances of success, not necessarily guaranteeing it.
• Buying later is the norm. Unless there is high pain for the buyer, they are not going to buy now. They will find you when there is a need. Then they will study before they decide to connect with you. Nurture the relationship gently and keep providing relevant answers along the way and you may get a chance to engage. It is about being ready and helping someone become ready.

Every year, there are tectonic shifts in multiple industries. We all search for what we want. We initiate the buying process and we are looking for value along the way. Inbound marketing is about being there in step with your audience.

What are you going to do to build a true marketing strategy this year? Where do you need help?

Flickr Photo By Georgette

I found Seth Godin’s article on bonus content and multimedia spot on (as usual). The experimentation with using multimedia inside a book has large possibilities. We are enamored with our mobile devices and tablets and their special effects. Seeing bigger budget special effects in movies continues to awe us. However, tampering with the medium of a book and seeking to monetize it with heavy embellishments lacks economic sensibility.

Books are about ideas that change us. At their core, this is what the value proposition is. The lure of using technology and media to augment the book is naturally appealing. However, these can also be toys and distractions without a true return on investment.

Just because we have access to amazing innovation does not mean that it makes our offering more special. It can be distracting, costly and damaging. If you blast the world with spam, post on trivial matters on your Twitter and Facebook and go overboard with Photoshop, you can create more noise than true value.

When I read a book, I want to engage deeply and read the content. I want to learn something.

When buyers engage your brand, they are looking for something beyond hype. They want to know if they can trust you and if you are for real. They want to mitigate risk. Your credibility is critical to establish trust. Substance with style is important. What if you connected by:

• Saying it simply and plainly?
• Making it easy to find out what you do?
• Provide convenience at every touchpoint?
• Emphasizing what you stand for?
• Being real?

We are all buyers and we have seen a lot of embellished marketing. There’s a temptation to add on more bells and whistles as they become available. The social media bubble has created a craze for companies. So has email marketing, ghost blogging and YouTube video production. It may be social, but is it building a relationship and trust?

You are one of thousands of choices. Stand out by focusing on the content and substance of your message and value proposition. Let others pollute with the noise and chaos of the latest fad. It is a lasting and working strategy for success.

What are some areas you can focus and get more substantive on?

• Emotion. Culture, relationships and expectations are extremely high during the holiday season. Buying is an emotional process. Before a purchase is made, there is an emotional motivation. Tapping into and aligning with your buyer’s emotion is critical for connecting your product or service.
• Timing. Certain offers are relevant when the timing is right. If you offer a 50% transmission discount when my car’s gears breakdown, you are extremely relevant. Before this, it is noise. Helping me have a relevant answer to gift giving, tax deductions or employee recognition is a timely offer.
• Creativity. We are bored with the mundane. We buy this throughout the rest of the year. If you can position your offering in a new light that shows creativity and context, it catches attention. Tell a story. Sell the story. Help your buyer imagine a new context. Creativity and imagination can transform otherwise mundane offerings into desirable products.
• Customization. Something that is specific for a business or a person is much more desirable than a product for the masses. It meets a specific need that feels personal. It’s why seeing your name on a mug or having a product that works specifically for your business is perceived as higher value than the generic version.

As buyers spike in their consumption, be positioned with your value proposition. There is a cyclic window which you can tune into that reaps great rewards for those that understand why people buy.

How can you reposition your offering to connect with buyers?

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?

When a buyer is wanting something, they search and look specifically for their desired product or service. The choices may be numerous. Your competitors are just a click away. If they click off of your website, then you can easily be forgotten in their continual navigation.

Imagine what you do when you do start to hone in on some choices after searching. You gravitate to places of value. You are seeking validation. Here is how validation works within an inbound marketing process:

• Content Which Educates. Sellers think about what they sell all the time. They forget that buyers think about many diverse things and have limited attention. They are new to a domain you are fluent and obsessive about. They don’t even know the right questions to ask. If you have content which educates then their searching and navigation continually draws them into your rich resources to help them understand value and orient themselves to your industry.
• What Others Say. When the buyer decides that you are worth engaging because of what they see and feel from your inbound marketing systems, then they find validation in what others say. Testimonials, social media and other forums and sites which lend opinion about you are important. They build a picture of your credibility. It’s all out there. Be sure your goodwill and success stories are captured and searchable.
• Congruence. We have all experienced businesses which have remarkable marketing but they disappoint when the first touch point with the customer happens. Unresponsiveness, uncaring, rudeness or complexity create incongruence with the message. Validation requires that what the buyer experiences aligns with what they expect from what they read and research.

There are anonymous visitors that are checking you out right now and trying to decide if you provide value and are a good choice. If you can think through each step of your process with these points in mind, then trust grows and you win new business. Fix the broken links and work it continually. The battle for our customers’ minds and business is relentless.

How can your own process work better?

When a person lands on an article or is following you via social media or RSS, they gravitate to what will improve their life and circumstance.  They have problems and they are searching and tuning in for answers.  Your content can create the value and guidance they are seeking.  Here are ways to make teaching articles effective and move your buyer to higher levels of trust:

• Think deeply about the obstacles.  Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and empathize with their pain and obstacles.  Articulate this and help them to understand the context of their problem.  Providing context and what the obstacles are will make a connection and make your content relevant to their world.
• Provide strategy and steps.  Walk your prospect through the steps.  Tell them how to overcome the obstacles.  Listing them out in sequence with descriptive steps helps them to take action.  A checklist also works.  If they do the steps a positive outcome of change should happen.
• Focus on the change.  You have success stories.  Share what the picture looks like and how people who have used your process, service, product or advice benefitted.  Paint a picture so they can see themselves inside the story.  Connect the dots through teaching that each step leads to the outcome you articulate.
• Share how you help.  There may not be a complete solution without your leadership and service.  Speak concretely about how you work and what part you play in the successful story.  Teach how your process and approach works and how you do things differently and specially.

Assume that buyers are not as educated as you are.  They are learning to ask the right questions and think about how to solve a problem that is commonplace and frequent for you.  Teaching them how to approach and contextualize their problem provides immense value to orient them to how to solve the problem.

How can you use teaching articles to help your buyers?  Feel free to comment below.

• Get oriented.  You want to understand what is available and how to ask good questions and make intelligent decisions.  You have to understand the context of what you are seeking first.  As buyers, we are engaged with multiple markets.  In the awareness stage, we are seeking information to help us in our understanding.
• Understand fit.  You have a problem to solve.  You want to know if what is available can be used off the shelf or molded to provide a specific resolution to your problem.  It has to fit into your world.
• Find the leaders.  If you are looking at headphones, insurance or fitness memberships, you are assessing who the leader is in the market.  The leader promotes confidence and emulates what the market opts for.  Leadership defines the category you are investigating.

As a seller, it is premature to engage with heavy-handed selling in the awareness stage.  Your buyer is not ready.  A well-developed marketing automation strategy and system helps your buyer to get comfortable with your brand and receive the information to help them prepare for their next mindset jump in the buying process.

Your buyer thinks like you do. They start with disorientation and seek to get oriented.  The awareness stage is a ripe opportunity to create and build trust that can grow.  Serve the people who are in the initial awareness stage with the right information at the right time and it will allow for a movement through the marketing automation funnel.

How are you serving your prospects that are in the awareness stage?

At the end of the day, marketing automation is a system.  The system is, in turn, a project with specific requirements for a specific buyer.  Thus, there is a lot of work, thinking and strategy behind a marketing automation initiative.  A badly managed process can result in the frustration side of the equation.  A sound strategy and execution can provide systematic management of inbound leads.

Everyone Has A Lead Generation Problem

Businesses want more leads.  These come from how compelling your interaction and substance of your offering is.  A lead is someone that raises their hand.  We all want more.  It’s difficult to get attention when everyone is clicking around on Google and thumbing through their mobile devices.

Content which makes a true meaningful connection and is targeted for a person trying to solve a problem not only gets attention, but engages your buyer.  After this, it is about building trust and fanning the flame of their interest.  It is not for the faint of heart.  It is about commitment and continual refinement in the following ways:

• Analysis of buyer behaviors.  You have a lot of data which tracks every movement of a website visitor.  The data needs to make sense and be analyzed for where the opportunities and drop-off points are.  It is an ongoing process.
• Building content assets.  Your content lives.  It needs to continue to grow and build an online asset for getting found and nurturing the next wave of leads.  Past content needs to be integrated together to drive further exploration by leads.
• Integrating Sales Feedback.  Lead scoring serves your sales process and sales people.  Their feedback on how the algorithms are working needs to drive further refinement of your scoring schema.

There is not a magic ball to peer into and figure out the perfect marketing automation mix.  You arrive at perfection by continually working hard at the system and processing  new lead experiences.  It is a game of improvement made possible by transparency into what buyers are doing.

Are there areas of lead generation and lead nurturing you find hard to upkeep?  What are they?

If your sales team was equipped with real-time information of the movements of your leads, then your sales process could transition from reaction to relevant engagement.  Here are some areas to consider for driving a modern day sales process:

1. Lead scoring.  You can assign numerical values to desirable behaviors such as site visits, white paper downloads and online video watching.  As certain scoring thresholds are met, you can nurture leads with special offers or trigger a sales call from an account manager.  This kind of offense can be engineered with continual feedback as your sales team identifies ready leads from unready ones.
2. Social media contests.  Using social media around periodic or regular contests can drive lead engagement.  Your sales team can be engaged for driving online dialogue with fans of your brand or product.  Driving the conversation is an important continuous activity.  Creating next steps such as a webinar for educating your most interested customers on a social media site should be clearly set up and tested.
3. Call to action follow-up.  Use a call to action like trial offers or content in the form of an ebook or white paper to engage new leads.  The content needs to be valuable for helping your prospects with their business problems.  Use surveys and lead nurturing to follow up.  Watch the level of engagement and allow your sales people to access a call list based on your lead behaviors.
4. Complete CRM activity.  Your sales people need to see every digital movement of your leads recorded in their respective lead records.  This helps orient the conversation as well as give perspective on whether a lead is ready.  Ensure your online systems feed your CRM system and that the information builds a complete picture of a lead’s interest.

Relying on information from phone calls or customer visits is only a small portion of what selling is about today.  Sales teams need the complete picture which helps them prioritize and engage their leads.

Which enhancements have you applied in your sales process or would like to implement?

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?