The call to action constitutes the beginning of the relationship after getting found.  Here are four call to action marketing strategies to employ in your buying process that will help your visitors take a next step:

1. Provide Ideas. The problem you solve is something that your visitors are thinking about continually.  They are looking for fresh ideas and new ways to attack their problems.  Give a list of ideas, preferably that you have tested and can attest to working.
2. Minimize Download Steps.  Ensure your forms, buttons and the overall process for getting access is as simple as possible.  Friction in the process can cause people to disengage.  Be the buyer and ask yourself if you would be delighted or annoyed by the process.
3. Measure Conversions. Use a real-time analytics system and ensure you can see the conversion points in the process for downloading.  If people are on the page, then ensure that you can deduce why they discontinue if you see such metrics.  If you see successes, replicate this elsewhere as part of your marketing automation process.
4. Nurture Via Marketing Automation. After the call to action has worked, the next step is to create personalized marketing to the new lead which shows care and connection.  Your marketing automation campaign should be relevant to the value piece they consume and invite them to a logical small next step.

This step in the buying process is critical to manage from an experience standpoint.  It sets up the next parts of an effective marketing automation process.  Analysis should provide the feedback loop you need to refine how the conversion occurs between visitors to leads.  Be vigilant and you will be growing a database of potential leads to work through the next phases to your sales process.

What are some of your call to action strategies that have worked?

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.

What if I am not ready to be closed?  When we first start buying, we are not ready to be closed.  We are looking for information and we are wanting to find that information to help us feel comfortable, educated and aware of our need.  We may not be able to articulate our need just yet.  Talking to a salesperson prematurely only highlights the awkwardness.

Make It About Buying

If it was the old days, I would tell you to get out there, woo prospects, educate them, follow up and close them.  They gave you permission.  You were the keeper of special knowledge after all.

Today, that is both disruptive and awkward.  Information is free for people.  They expect to find it with a few searches and clicks.  The internet has allowed a complete self-service model which empowers buyers to learn before they decide.  There is plenty for them to consume and they will take their time until they become close to as knowledgeable as you, Ms. Salesperson.

Here’s how you can help them do what they are going to do anyways – avoid salespeople, educate themselves and decide on their own – and pick you when they are ready:

1. Create Smart Decision Trees – Build logic and autoresponders which are intelligent to serve up the right information based on your buyer decisions and indecisions.
2. Package Content – Use multimedia and content strategically delivered and marketed for consumption and download.  Make it count.  Put it on the web on your domain.
3. Measure Every Movement – You should be able to see everything the buyer does.  There is a lot of action they are taking apart from calling you.  It’s data that tells you whether they are ready or not.  If you are flying blind, it’s because you have poor systems and are not understand what marketing automation is.  Get smarter.
4. Position Your Leadership – Always, always, always lead.  Help.  Think ahead for the customer.  Be more valuable than anyone else.

Reality Today

The reality is that organizations are realizing that hiring a large sales force is vanity.  There may be a lot of busy work, but the results damage your brand more than help your results.

The job of sales has been contracted because information via the internet has tilted the balance of power to the buyer.  They can self-serve and they prefer this.  If you cannot see this reality, then think about it long and hard.  After doing so, take the advice in stride and rebuild how you sell.  Skinny selling and beef up buying.  It is the winning strategy of today.

What have you noticed about how your buyers engage you compared to the past?  Feel free to comment below.

Not all prospects are equal. Just because someone visited your site or store, does not mean you have permission to engage them. A portion of them will at some point give this permission based on their preferences and requests. The others will react negatively towards unsolicited marketing advances. We should know this because we are buyers, too.

The mindset of the buyer is critical to understand and capture.

The traditional marketing approach is to send a one-size-fits-all message to everyone and hope for a few responses. This is lazy, irresponsible and destroys your credibility. The ability to work with the few who truly are your customers is available today. Depending on the readiness of your buyer, it is wise to deliver the right message at the right time to nurture the relationship with your brand. With a marketing automation system, you can engage in a custom, one-to-one fashion based on the digital body language of your unseen buyer.

Different marketing automation campaigns which nurture the customer based on their digital profile need to be developed and triggered. The strategy and personalized approach with the right timing need to be developed with a sensitivity to effective nurturing.

Most people in that first experience with you are not ready to buy. Therefore, providing value becomes an important component of the marketing automation strategy. Value can take many forms. It starts with the question, “What is valuable to your buyer?” This requires a mindset shift from, “How can I sell?” to “Why does a person buy?”

The exchange of value builds trust over time. This is required in a buying atmosphere where choices are abundant and skepticism is high. Connecting in terms of value often revolves around pain or pleasure. Depending on your value proposition, it is important to get at the root of the buyer’s pain or pleasure and deliver value methodically and precisely, speaking to their emotion. A few examples include:

• Getting promoted
• Increasing revenue
• Overcoming boredom
• Feeling productive

Your product or service is a means to such an end. Your message must connect personally, relevantly and timely based on the reaction of the buyer through automated systems. When they emerge with a readiness based on your marketing automation triggers, then your sales process will effectively engage with your true customer.

The goal is to design for the few, not the many. This focuses your marketing automation to avoid the drag from irrelevant buyers and deliver value to the ones that truly will reward you with sales and loyalty.

A few years ago I decided I wanted to do something really nice with my son.  I booked a trip to Los Angeles and purchased floor tickets at the Forum to see our favorite team, the Dallas Mavericks play. I decided it would be nice to stay at the hotel where the Mavericks stay when they travel to Los Angeles, so I reserved a room at The Ritz-Carlton, Marina Del Rey. I would recommend this hotel to anyone. Here’s one reason why.

After arriving at the hotel and checking in, we entered our room and found a nice handwritten card with four warm, freshly baked cookies.

That’s it!

It was simple. Unexpected. Concrete. Credible. Emotional.

It met five of the six principles mentioned in the book Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath that are essentials to making ideas sticky (memorable). It worked, and is something neither I nor my son will forget.

The Ritz-Carlton, Marina Del Rey understood there is no greater value in the sales process than the discipline of adding value. It was expected to get great service. It was expected to be clean and fresh. It was not expected for us to arrive and receive a personalized welcome card with a gift certificate and four fresh baked cookies.

As in any relationship, the better in tune you are to your customer’s pain (wants) and needs, the more easily you can meet that person’s needs, which develops trust. Rather than looking at how you can sell your customer what you want, ask yourself,  ”Am I selling or providing value?”

When you sell without providing value first, there is no trust, which creates tension and resistance.
When you provide value first, trust will rise and tension will decrease. This leads to acceptance.

If you want more business, quit selling and begin adding meaningful value. It’s your repeated actions over time that lead to less tension and more trust and more sales.

As a business advisor, the story I am going to share with you is one that I see more often than not. There is a story in the Book of Genesis about two brothers – Esau and Jacob. Though they are twins, Esau was the firstborn allowing him the full benefits of the “birth-right,” therein. In a sense, he had a built-in trust fund waiting to inherit.

Their family had learned to be cunning in their dealings. Jacob learned this skill as well. The story is told that one day when Esau came back from hunting, he was famished and tired. He asked his brother Jacob to relieve his hunger. Seeing Esau’s predicament, Jacob cut a business deal. Esau gave up his birthright for one bowl of soup. He was so focused on his present pain that he could not see value in something far off.

Later, Jacob deceived his own father and received a blessing under disguise as Esau. He received blessings while Esau received curses.

The story is told with a commendation of Jacob’s behaviors. I like Jacob for his ability to see value and pursue it. His methods are questionable; however, he is admirable because he risked everything he had to get what was valuable. He paid a price for the value he sought. It was value that was beyond any instant gratification.

We are around Esau people every day. They would go for the bowl of soup. They are near-sighted. They have a hard time paying a price. It is easy to win against such people. Just pay a price they will not. Working harder, gaining more knowledge, and spending more money are hard for cost-conscience people. They ask how little they can give for a dollar rather than how much. Business becomes about them, not you. Cost gets in the way.

It is obvious why so many business people fail. They are not willing or able to pay a price. They can only focus on what is in front of them and don’t truly go after what they want. They expect everyone around them to pay. They believe business works by investing as little as possible and expecting to get as much as possible at the cost of others.

Today is a great time to separate yourself from people who lack vision and passion and move into opportunities where the value players exist. Think about how you play the game of making money. If your mindset is always focused on cost, then watch out. You are always exposed. The guy who is willing to pay a price you are not will displace you. You may be good at spending other people’s money or using other people’s time, but that is because you can only think about the soup.

If your mindset, however, is to persevere, work harder than the next guy and pay a price, then the opportunities are abundant. Most people do not go the extra mile, much less the extra foot. The story of Esau later comments that his pathetic business transaction resulted in remorse and tears, yet he could change nothing though he desperately tried.

Pay a price. Learn to pay all the time. You will be developing the habits of winning in whatever endeavor you pursue. Peter Drucker reminds people, “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” Your good fortune may only be because someone else paid a price. Learn to pay a price and you will be finding the missed fortunes the short-sighted people around you cannot step into.

As I was in the waiting room of an office, I could see the inevitable.  A buyer and a seller were missing each other; the same script being played out.  The professional seeking to sell his services is telling the buyer how great they are and what they have to offer.

If you turned the sound off, you could see the buyer going through the same motions as anyone who is being sold.  They start resisting, and the tension feels higher than necessary.  They are set up to say, “No,” rather than salivate for the value the seller has.

Have you ever caught yourself selling?  Once this happens, you start engaging in the ritual which causes the buyer to want to say, “No.”

Today, people are quick to say, “No,” for many reasons.  Imagine yourself peddling newspapers.  A guy is walking down the street towards you but quickly reacts instead of engages.  He kindly declines.  The scenario, similar to many others as well, is set up to fail.  The process, the method of connecting and the system for buying is not congruent with how you like to buy.

If you are caught selling, how about stopping the tape?  Here are likely reasons you are in the sales death roll:

1. Lack of Positioning: You are not perceived as valuable.  You may be too casual or perceived as a commodity. There are many people, products and services like you. You may have done a poor job of helping them perceive value beyond the commodity in who you are and what you offer.
2. Your Buying Process Is Boring: If the way you do business is always about a handshake and a smile, then think about how you appear to the buyer who moves through a month buying hundreds of goods and services.  You are competing with the experience each of those companies, brands and products is delivering – Nordstrom, Rain Forest Cafe, Starbucks, Apple – how does your buying experience match up?  They have standards from buying based on the value other businesses have set as an expectation.
3. You Think About Yourself: Why should someone pick you?  If your answer starts with these words, “We,” “I,” and “Us,” then you lose.  The buyer does not care about you.  They want to know how you help them, make them more money and bring peace of mind to their world.  They want to hear you talk in terms of them, not you.  If you have been in conversations around vain people, you know what it feels like.
4. They Believe You Want to Sell, Not Help: This is closely aligned with number 3 above.  This is about authenticity, motive and genuineness.  If you are focused on helping, then the buyer can sense this.  If you are focused on selling, then there is a guard that goes up.  Helping has you thinking about what the buyer is trying to accomplish.  They are not trying to buy your stuff. They are trying to solve a problem, make money, connect with people, have more peace, feel good about themselves, and an array of other true motives.  How does what you do help them?  Talk this way to avoid selling.
5. You Don’t Have Value: What makes you different?  Good service is not different.  It is an expectation.  If a buyer perceives that you are the same as everyone else who does what you do, then they have a valid reason to treat you as a commodity.  Your articulation of value is a ruse, not a reality.  Make it real and communicate it.  No gimmicks. Making it real is hard work.  Do the hard work.

I enjoy watching Jim Carrey perform.  He is remarkable at contorting his behaviors to get us to laugh in an instant.  He also helps us break the scripts.  When Jim Carrey is inside of a social interaction, he is far from going through the motions, he is imagineering.   Why be captive to a dead end script?  If you are caught selling, you are setting up the buyer to say, “No.”  If you help the person buy and you have the business systems and approach set up to create a new script, the possibilities move towards your favor.  Break your script and redesign your approach.  When you are caught selling, it only shows you have to work your performance in a major way.   Want to learn more about how to change your script to attract more customers?  Take action and avoid the insanity of selling.  Learn what it means to hire AscendWorks business consulting to put together the systems and the scripts for attracting a customer, positioning your brand as valuable and creating a connection.  We create the systems which communicate relevantly and on-demand with your prospective customer through marketing and sales automation.  Redesign the script.

Remarkably, we have your attention right now. Later today, you will be taking in a relentless amount of text, images and sound. Your brain will be processing and shifting continually. The ability to distinguish between relevance and noise will become tiring and laborious.

Your customer will be doing the same thing. The reality is that your customer behaves differently than they did 20 years ago. They behave differently than they did even two years ago. Everything is becoming relentlessly fast. People’s email inboxes are overflowing and unorganized. Phone etiquette has stretched to the point that people do not even extend professional courtesy by returning calls. Flashy advertisements are ignored and bore onlookers. Everyone has too many choices. Everyone feels rushed. They are not paying attention to you. You look irrelevant and invisible.

Have you thought about how to engage the people you want to do business with rather than try to sell them? Engaging them means having their attention and bringing value. Value means you have something that is valuable enough to keep their attention so that they want more.

The key question is whether you will put the work into the process of gaining and expanding attention. In today’s economy, where we have so many choices and everyone is buying something right now, you must be relevant at the right time. You must be a person and a business that comes to mind when the buyer wants to buy, not when you want to sell. Here are three ideas to help you get into the present era and do business the way people are buying:

1. Define Value: Value is a conceptual word. Get concrete. What really is important to your customer? Don’t talk about yourself and how great you are. If you were them, what would it be? Why are they even considering your product or service? It is not an end in itself. It fits within what they want in life.
2. Get Credible: If you are trying gimmicks, people pick up on it easily. You do the same when you shop. The cute flyer or the person throwing t-shirts at you do not work to get you to buy. What works is how your mind sees a company, product and people. What shapes that are the images you associate with the brand. Pictures reinforce. Writing positions. If you are going to compete for attention, you must commit to writing or hire our team to help you get in the game. Think about the millions of Google searches done every day. Are people looking for cute pictures or looking for content? They are looking for something. If they can’t read it from you, you are not in the game. You don’t get the benefit of talking to a Google searcher. You must already be positioned.
3. Keep Raising Your Game: If you wore the clothes you had four years ago, you would look outdated. If you keep using the same technique to connect with your customer, it becomes outdated. Your customer can be wowed once by a thing. They want to continually be wowed. That means you must become a person who continually grows in knowledge and ideas that bring the value you defined as important to your customer. Your customer does not care about your company. They care about themselves. They are out there trying to make money, solve problems, and be comforted. Be about the same things. Bring advice, ideas and perspective to help them get these things done, and your value will be there for them to buy when they are ready.

Put these into action, and you will be doing business the way people want to be served. It starts with getting and keeping attention. When your customer sees your name or your company name, they should be looking forward to it. It should excite them. They want to give you the currency of attention. If you cannot get their attention, they will never buy. If you do the hard work of thinking about how to gain attention and build systems for this, you will win.

Our work to help companies increase demand focuses heavily on our understanding that getting and keeping attention is the root issue. You may agree, yet you can’t think through how to implement. You may want to get in the game and hire us to solve this root problem. Take action. Focus all your energy on figuring out how to expand attention, and you will be on the path to business growth.